Capitalism and Slavery

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Capitalism

Slavery

Eric Williams

s THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS Chapel Hill

Copyright, 1944,

by

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY

THE WILLIAM BYRD

PRESS, INC.

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

PREFACE

THE

PRESENT STUDY is an attempt to place in historical perspective the relationship between early capitalism as exemplified by Great Britain, and the Negro slave trade, Negro slavery and

the general colonial trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Every age rewrites history, but particularly ours, which has been forced by events to re-evaluate our conceptions of history and economic and political development. The progress of the Industrial Revolution has been treated more or less ade-

quately in

many books both

learned and popular, and

its

lessons

are fairly well established in the consciousness of 'the educated class in general and of those people in particular who are re-

sponsible for the creation and guidance of informed opinion. On the other hand, while material has been accumulated and books have been written about the period which preceded the Industrial Revolution, the world-wide and interrelated nature of the commerce of that period, its direct effect upon the de-

velopment of the Industrial Revolution, and the heritage which it has left even upon the civilization of today have not anywhere been placed in compact and yet comprehensive perspective. This study is an attempt to do so, without, however, failing to give indications of the economic origin of well-known social, political, and even intellectual currents. The book, however, is not an essay in ideas or interpretation. It is strictly an economic study of the role of Negro slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England and of mature industrial capitalism in destroying the slave system. It is therefore first a study in English economic history and second in

VU

Vlll

PREFACE

West Indian and Negro history. It is not a study of the institution of slavery but of the contribution of slavery to the development of British capitalism. Many debts must be acknowledged. The staffs of the followBritish ing institutions were very kind and helpful to me:

Museum; Public Record Office; India Office Library; West Rhodes House Library, Oxford; Bank of

India Committee;

England Record

Office; the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society; Friends' House, London; John Rylands Library, Manchester; Central Library, Manchester; Public

Library, Liverpool; Wilberforce Museum, Hull; Library of Congress; Biblioteca Nacional, Havana; Sociedad Economica de Amigos del Pai's, Havana. I wish to thank the Newberry Library, Chicago, for

its

kindness in making

it

possible for

through an inter-library loan with Founders' Library, University, to see Sir Charles Whitworth's valuable

me,

Howard statistics

on "State of the Trade of Great Britain in its imports and exports, progressively from the year 1697-1773." My research has been facilitated by grants from different sources: the Trinidad Government, which extended an original scholarship; Oxford University, which awarded me two Senior

Fund for the study of British Colonial made two grants; and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, which awarded me fellowships in 1940 and 1942. Professor Lowell J. Ragatz of George Washington University in this city, Professor Frank W. Pitman of Pomona College,

Studentships; the Beit

History, which

Claremont, California, and Professor Melville J. Herskovits of Northwestern University, very kindly read the manuscript and

made many

suggestions. So did my senior colleague at Howard University, Professor Charles Burch. Dr. Vincent Harlow, now Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of doctoral dissertation at Oxford and was London, supervised

my

always very helpful. Finally, my wife was of great assistance to me in taking my notes and typing the manuscript. ERIC WILLIAMS.

Howard

University

Washington, D.G September 12, 1943

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTCR

Preface 1

.

The

vii

Origin of Negro Slavery

3.

The Development of the Negro Slave Trade British Commerce and the Triangular Trade

4.

The West

5.

British Industry

6.

The American

7.

The Development

2.

50

.

.

J/

8f

and the Triangular Trade .... Revolution

98 108

of British Capitalism,

126

8.

The

9.

British Capitalism

10.

.

India Interest

1783-1833

New

3 .

Industrial

The "Commercial

Order

and the West Indies

/5J /

54

Part of the Nation" and

Slavery

169

n.

The

"Saints" and Slavery

178

12.

The

Slaves and Slavery

7^7

1

Conclusion

209

Notes

213

Bibliography

262

Index

2ji

3.

ix

I

THE ORIGIN OF

NEGRO SLAVERY

WHEN

IN 1492 COLUMBUS, representing the Spanish monarchy, discovered the New World, he set in train the long and bitter international rivalry over colonial possessions for which, after four and a half centuries, no solution has yet been found. Portuof international expangal, which had initiated the movement sion, claimed the new territories on the ground that they fell within the scope of a papal bull of 1455 authorizing her to reinfidel peoples. The two powers, to avoid arbitration and, as Catholics, turned to the controversy, sought a natural and logical step in an age when the universal

duce to servitude

all

Pope

were still unchallenged by individuals and governments. After carefully sifting the rival claims, the Pope issued in 1493 a series of papal bulls which established a line of demarcation between the colonial possessions of the two states: the East went to Portugal and the West to Spain. The partition, however, failed to satisfy Portuguese aspirations and in the subsequent year the contending parties reached a more satisfactory compromise in the Treaty of Tordesillas, which rectified the papal judgment to permit Portuguese ownership of Brazil. Neither the papal arbitration nor the formal treaty was intended to be binding on other powers, and both were in fact claims of the Papacy

repudiated. Cabot's voyage to

North America 3

in 1497

was Eng-

4

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY

land's immediate reply to the partition. Francis I of France voiced his celebrated protest: "The sun shines for me as for others. I should very much like to see the clause in Adam's will that excludes me from a share of the world." The king of

Denmark Indies

refused to accept the Pope's ruling as far as the East Sir William Cecil, the famous Elizabe-

were concerned.

than statesman, denied the Pope's right "to give and take kingdoms to whomsoever he pleased." In 1580 the English govern-

ment countered with the

principle of effective occupation as the determinant of sovereignty. 1 Thereafter, in the parlance of the day, there was "no peace below the line." It was a dispute,

words of

a later governor of Barbados, as to "whether of King England or of France shall be monarch of the West 2 ." for the Indies, EngKing of Spain cannot hold it long. land, France, and even Holland, began to challenge the Iberian Axis and claim their place in the sun. The Negro, too, was to in the

the

.

.

have his place, though he did not ask for it: it was the broiling sun of the sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations of the New

World. According to Adam Smith, the prosperity of a new colony depends upon one simple economic factor "plenty of good land." 3 The British colonial possessions up to 1776, however, can broadly be divided into two types.

The

first is

the self-sufficient

farmers, "mere eartheconomy Gibbon Wakefield derisively called them,4 living on a soil which, as Canada was described in 1840, was "no lota large number of tery, with a few exorbitant prizes and

and

diversified

of

small

scratchers" as

and certain investment." 5 The second type which the colony has facilities for the production of staple articles on a large scale for an export market. In the first category fell the Northern colonies of the American mainland; in

blanks, but a secure is

the second, the mainland tobacco colonies and the sugar islands of the Caribbean. In colonies of the latter type, as Merivale

pointed out, land and capital were both useless unless labor could be commanded. 6 Labor, that is, must be constant and

must work, or be made to work,

in co-operation. In such colonies the rugged individualism of the Massachusetts farmer,

ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY

5

sweat practising his intensive agriculture and wringing by the of his brow niggardly returns from a grudging soil, must yield

gang of the big capitalist practising extenand producing on a large scale. Without this

to the disciplined sive agriculture

compulsion, the laborer would otherwise exercise his natural inclination to work his own land and toil on his own account.

The

story

is

Mr. frequently told of the great English capitalist,

who

took 50,000 and three hundred laborers with him to the Swan River colony in Australia. His plan was that his laborers would work for him, as in the old country. Arrived Peel,

in Australia,

however, where land was plentiful

work

too plentiful

as small preferred rather than under the for proprietors, wages. Austracapitalist lia was not the left without a servand was England, capitalist

the laborers

to

for

themselves

bed or fetch him water. 7 For the Caribbean colonies the solution for this dispersion and "earth-scratching" was slavery. The lesson of the early history

ant to

make

his

of Georgia is instructive. Prohibited from employing slave labor by trustees who, in some instances, themselves owned

found them-

slaves in other colonies, the

Georgian planters selves in the position, as Whitefield phrased it, of pepple whose legs were tied and were told to walk. So the Georgia magistrates drank toasts "to the one thing needful" slavery until the ban 8 lifted. "Odious resource" though it might be, as Merivale called it, 9 was an of the first imeconomic institution slavery It been had basis of Greek the portance. economy and had built

was

up the Roman Empire. In modern times it provided the sugar for the tea and the coffee cups of the Western world. It produced the cotton to serve as a base for modern capitalism. It made the American South and the Caribbean islands. Seen in forms a part of that general picture of the harsh treatment of the underprivileged classes, the unsympathetic poor laws and severe feudal laws, and the indifference historical perspective,

it

with which the rising capitalist class was "beginning to reckon prosperity in terms of pounds sterling, and becoming used .

to the idea of sacrificing

human

life

.

.

to the deity of increased

10

production." Adam Smith, the intellectual champion of the industrial mid-


6

die class with

its

new-found doctrine of freedom,

later

propa-

gated the argument that it was, in general, pride and love of power in the master that led to slavery and that, in those countries where slaves were employed, free labor would be

more

profitable.

Universal

experience

demonstrated

con-

clusively that "the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any.

A

who

can acquire no property can have no other inperson 11 terest than to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible." Adam Smith thereby treated as an abstract proposition what is a The ecospecific question of time, place, labor and soil. nomic superiority of free hired labor over slave is obvious even to the slave owner. Slave labor is given reluctantly, it is un12 skilful, it lacks versatility.

Other things being equal, free men in the early stages of colonial devel-

would be

preferred. But opment, other things are not equal. When slavery is adopted, it is not adopted as the choice over free labor; there is no choice at all. The reasons for slavery, wrote Gibbon Wakefield, "are not moral, but economical circumstances; they relate not to 13 With the limited popuvice and virtue, but to production." lation of Europe in the sixteenth century, the free laborers necessary to cultivate the staple crops of sugar, tobacco and World could not have been supplied in cotton in the

New

quantities adequate to permit large-scale production. Slavery was necessary for this, and to get slaves the Europeans turned first

to the aborigines and then to Africa. certain circumstances slavery has

Under

some obvious ad-

vantages. In the cultivation of crops like sugar, cotton and tobacco, where the cost of production is appreciably reduced

on

larger units, the slaveowner, with his large-scale production and his organized slave gang, can make more profitable

use of the land than the small farmer or peasant proprietor. For such staple crops, the vast profits can well stand the greater 14 Where all the knowledge expense of inefficient slave labor. is simple and a matter of routine, constancy and cooperation in labor slavery is essential, until, by importation of new recruits and breeding, the population has reached the

required

point of density and the land available for appropriation has


7

been already apportioned. When that stage is reached, and only then, the expenses of slavery, in the form of the cost and maintenance of slaves, productive and unproductive, exceed the cost of hired laborers. is

As Merivale wrote:

"Slave labour

dearer than free wherever abundance of free labour can be

procured"

15

From

the standpoint of the grower, the greatest defect of The in the fact that it slavery quickly exhausts the soil. labor supply of low social status, docile and cheap, can be lies

maintained in subjection only by systematic degradation and by deliberate efforts to suppress its intelligence. Rotation of

and

farming are therefore alien to slave wrote of Virginia, "we can buy an acre Jefferson of new land cheaper than we can manure an old one." 16 The slave planter, in the picturesque nomenclature of the South, is a "land-killer." This serious defect of slavery can be counterbalanced and postponed for a time if fertile soil is practically crops

societies.

scientific

As

unlimited. Expansion

is

a necessity of slave societies; the slave

17 power requires ever fresh conquests. "It is more profitable," wrote Merivale, "to cultivate a fresh soil by the dear labour of

than an exhausted one by the cheap labour of freemen." 18 From Virginia and Maryland to Carolina, Georgia, Texas and the Middle West; from Barbados to Jamaica to Saint Domingue and then to Cuba; the logic was inexorable and the slaves,

same.

It

was

unwillingly behind.

a relay race; the first to start passed the baton, be sure, to another and then limped sadly

we may

Slavery in the Caribbean has been too narrowly identified with the Negro. A racial twist has thereby been given to what is basically an economic phenomenon. Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery. Unfree labor in the World was brown, white, black, and yellow; Catholic, Protestant and pagan.

New

The

instance of slave trading and slave labor developed involved, racially, not the Negro but the Indian. The Indians rapidly succumbed to the excessive labor

in the

first

New World

demanded of them, the

insufficient diet, the

white man's

dis-


8

eases,

and their

the inability to adjust themselves to

new way

Accustomed to a life of liberty, their constitution and temperament were ill-adapted to the rigors of plantation slavery. As Fernando Ortiz writes: "To subject the Indian to

of

life.

the mines, to their monotonous, insane and severe labor, with-

out

tribal sense,

without religious

away from him the meaning of not only

The

his

ritual,

.

.

...

his life.

.

was like taking was to enslave

It

19

muscles but also his collective

spirit."

Trujillo, capital of the Dominican Republic (the present-day name of half of the island formerly called Hispaniola), will see a statue of Columbus, with the visitor to

Ciudad

woman gratefully writing (so reads the name of the Discoverer. The story is told, on the the caption) other hand, of the Indian chieftain, Hatuey, who, doomed to die for resisting the invaders, staunchly refused to accept the figure of an Indian

Christian faith as the gateway to salvation when he learned that his executioners, too, hoped to get to Heaven. It is far more probable that Hatuey, rather than the anonymous woman,

represented contemporary Indian opinion of their

new

over-

lords.

England and France, in their colonies, followed the Spanish practice of enslavement of the Indians. There was one conspicuous difference the attempts of the Spanish Crown, however ineffective, to restrict Indian slavery to those who refused to accept Christianity and to the warlike Caribs on the specious plea that they were cannibals. From the standpoint of the British government Indian slavery, unlike later Negro slavery which involved vital imperial interests, was a purely colonial matter. As Lauber writes: "The home government was interested in colonial slave conditions

the African slave trade slavery)

was never

and

was involved.

sufficiently

.

legislation .

extensive

.

Since

to

only it

when

(Indian

interfere

with

slavery and the slave trade, it never received any attention from the home government, and so existed as belegal

Negro

cause never declared

20

illegal."

But Indian slavery never was extensive in the British dominions. Ballagh, writing of Virginia, says that popular sentiment had never "demanded the subjection of the Indian race


9

se, as was practically the case with the Negro in the first slave act of 1661, but only of a portion of it, and that admittedly a very small portion. ... In the case of the Indian slavery

per

.

.

.

was viewed as of an occasional nature, a preventive penalty and not as a normal and permanent condition." 21 In the New England colonies Indian slavery was unprofitable, for slavery of any kind was unprofitable because it was unsuited to the diversified agriculture of these colonies. In addition the Indian

was inefficient. The Spaniards discovered that one Negro was worth four Indians.22 A prominent official in Hispaniola in-

slave

sisted in 1518 that

"permission be given to bring Negroes, a race robust for labor, instead of natives, so weak that they can only be employed in tasks requiring little endurance, such as taking care of maize fields or farms." 23 The future staples of the New

World, sugar and cotton, required strength which the Indian lacked, and demanded the robust "cotton nigger" as sugar's need of strong mules produced in Louisiana the epithet "sugar mules." According to Lauber, "When compared with sums paid for Negroes at the same time and place the prices of Indian slaves are found to have been considerably lower." 24 The Indian reservoir, too, was limited, the African inexhaustible. Negroes therefore were stolen in Africa to work the lands stolen from the Indians in America. The voyages of Prince

Henry the Navigator complemented those of Columbus, West African history became the complement of West Indian.

The immediate Negro

successor of the Indian, however, was not the but the poor white. These white servants included a

variety of types. Some cause, before departure

were indentured servants, so called befrom the homeland, they had signed a contract, indented by law, binding them to service for a stipulated time in return for their passage. Still others,

known

as

"redemptioners," arranged with the captain of the ship to pay for their passage on arrival or within a specified time thereif they did not, they were sold by the captain to the highest bidder. Others were convicts, sent out by the deliberate policy of the home government, to serve for a specified period.

after;

This emigration was

in

tune with mercantilist theories of the


10

day which strongly advocated putting the poor to industrious and useful labor and favored emigration, voluntary or involunmore profitable tary, as relieving the poor rates and finding home. "Indenat idlers and abroad for occupations vagrants tured servitude," writes C. M. Haar, "was called into existence by two different though complementary forces: there was both a positive attraction from the New World and a negative re25 In a state paper delivered to James I pulsion from the Old." in 1606 Bacon emphasized that by emigration England would "a double gain commodity, in the avoidance of people here, and in use of them there." 26 making This temporary service at the outset denoted no inferiority or degradation. Many of the servants were manorial tenants Irishmen fleeing from the irksome restrictions of feudalism, and from the of freedom landlords bishops, seeking oppression Germans running away from the devastation of the Thirty

War. They transplanted in their hearts a burning desire for land, an ardent passion for independence. They came to the land of opportunity to be free men, their imaginations power-

Years'

fully wrought upon by glowing and extravagant descriptions in the home country. 27 It was only later when, in the words

of Dr. Williamson,

"all ideals

of a decent colonial society, of

a better and greater England overseas, were swamped in the 28 that the introduction of dispursuit of an immediate gain," reputable elements became a general feature of indentured service.

A

regular traffic developed in these indentured servants. Between 1654 and 1685 ten thousand sailed from Bristol alone,

and Virginia. 29 In 1683 white servchiefly for the West Indies of one-sixth ants represented Virginia's population. Two-thirds of the immigrants to Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century were white servants; in four years 25,000 came to Philadelphia alone. It has been estimated that more than a quarter of a million persons were of this class during the colonial 80 and that they probably constituted one-half of all period, 81 English immigrants, the majority going to the middle colonies. As commercial speculation entered the picture, abuses crept in. Kidnaping was encouraged to a great degree and became


II

a regular business in such towns as London and Bristol. Adults would be plied with liquor, children enticed with sweetmeats.

The

kidnapers were called "spirits," defined as "one that taketh upp men and women and children and sells them on a shipp to be conveyed beyond the sea." The captain of a ship trading

would visit the Clerkenwell House of Correction, with drink the girls who had been imprisoned there as disply and "invite" them to go to the West Indies.32 The orderly, temptations held out to the unwary and the credulous were so attractive that, as the mayor of Bristol complained, husbands were induced to forsake their wives, wives their husbands, and apprentices their masters, while wanted criminals found on the

to Jamaica

88 The wave transport ships a refuge from the arms of the law. of German immigration developed the "newlander," the labor

agent of those days,

who

up and down the Rhine Val-

traveled

ley persuading the feudal peasants to sell their belongings and emigrate to America, receiving a commission for each emi84

grant.

Much has been written about the trickery these were not averse practised,

to employing. 85

remains true, as Friedrich

it

"newlanders"

But whatever the deceptions

Kapp

has written, that

"the real ground for the emigration fever lay in the unhealthy political

and economic conditions.

sion of the conditions of the

little

.

.

.

The misery and

(German)

states

oppres-

promoted

much more dangerously and continuously than the " worst 'newlander.' 36 Convicts provided another steady source of white labor. The harsh feudal laws of England recognized three hundred capital emigration

crimes. Typical hanging offences included: picking a pocket for more than a shilling; shoplifting to the value of five shillings; stealing a horse or a sheep; poaching rabbits on a gentle37

Offences for which the punishment prescribed by law was transportation comprised the stealing of cloth, burning stacks of corn, the maiming and killing of cattle, hindering customs officers in the execution of their duty, and corrupt

man's

estate.

38

legal practices.

Proposals

made

in 1664

would have banished to

vagrants, rogues and idlers, petty thieves, gipsies, and loose persons frequenting unlicensed brothels. 89 piteous

the colonies

all

A

12


the death petition in 1667 prayed for transportation instead of sentence for a wife convicted of stealing goods valued at three

and four pence. 40 In 1745 transportation was the pen41 One year alty for the theft of a silver spoon and a gold watch. after the emancipation of the Negro slaves, transportation was the penalty for trade union activity. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that there was some connection between the law and the labor needs of the plantations, and the marvel is that so few people ended up in the colonies overseas. shillings

Benjamin Franklin opposed this "dumping upon the New of the outcasts of the Old" as the most cruel insult ever offered by one nation to another, and asked, if England was justified in sending her convicts to the colonies, whether the latter were justified in sending to England their rattlesnakes in 42 It is not clear exchange? why Franklin should have been so sensitive. Even if the convicts were hardened criminals, the great increase of indentured servants and free emigrants would have tended to render the convict influence innocuous, as increasing quantities of water poured in a glass containing poison.

World

Without convicts

the early development of the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century would have been impossible. Only a few of the colonists, however, were so particular. The

general attitude was summed up by a contemporary: "Their labor would be more beneficial in an infant settlement, than their vices could be pernicious." 43 There was nothing strange about this attitude. The great problem in a new country is the

problem of labor, and convict labor, as Merivale has pointed out, was equivalent to a free present by the government to the settlers without burdening the latter with the expense of im44 The governor of Virginia in 1611 was willing to portation. welcome convicts reprieved from death as "a readie way to furnish us with men and not allways with the worst kind of men." 45 The West Indies were prepared to accept all and sundry, even the spawn of Newgate and Bridewell, for "no goalebird \sic] can be so incorrigible, but there is hope of his conformity here, as well as of his preferment, which some have 46

happily experimented."

The

political

and

civil

disturbances in England between 1640


13

and 1740 augmented the supply of white servants. Political and religious nonconformists paid for their unorthodox^ by transportation, mostly to the sugar islands. Such was the fate of many of Cromwell's Irish prisoners, who were sent to the West Indies. 47 So thoroughly was this policy pursued that an active verb was added to the English language to "barbadoes" a per49 son. 48 Montserrat became and the largely an Irish colony, Irish

brogue

British

is still

West

frequently heard today in

Indies.

The

Irish,

many

parts of the servants.

however, were poor

hated the English, were always ready to aid England's 50 we can enemies, and in a revolt in the Leeward Islands in i689 see of that already signs burning indignation which, according

They

Washington some of

to Lecky, gave

his best soldiers.

61

The

Cromwell's Scottish campaigns were treated like vanquished the Irish before them, and Scotsmen came to be regarded as in

"the general travaillers and soldiers in most foreign parts." 52 Religious intolerance sent more workers to the plantations. In

66 1 Quakers refusing to take the oath for the third time were to be transported; in 1664 transportation, to any plantation exr

cept Virginia or New England, or a fine of one hundred pounds was decreed for the third offence for persons over sixteen assembling in groups of five or more under pretence of 53

religion.

Many

of

Monmouth's adherents were

sent to Bar-

bados, with orders to be detained as servants for ten years. prisoners were granted in batches to favorite courtiers,

made handsome even the Queen

profits

from the

shared. 54

A

traffic in

similar

which,

it is

The

who

alleged,

policy was resorted to after

the Jacobite risings of the eighteenth century. The transportation of these white servants shows in

its

true

horrors of the Middle Passage not as something light the unusual or inhuman but as a part of the age. The emigrants were packed like herrings. According to Mittelberger, each servant was allowed about

two

feet in

width and

six feet in

55 The boats were small, the voyage long, the length in bed. food, in the absence of refrigeration, bad, disease inevitable. to Parliament in 1659 describes how seventy-two servpetition

A

ants had been locked

up below deck during the whole voyage

of five and a half weeks, "amongst horses, that their souls,

14


56 through heat and steam under the tropic, fainted in them." Inevitably abuses crept into the system and Fearon was shocked

by "the

horrible picture of

human

suffering

which

this living

67 sepulchre" of an emigrant vessel in Philadelphia afforded. But conditions even for the free passengers were not much better in

those days, and the comment of a Lady of Quality describing a voyage from Scotland to the West Indies on a ship full of indentured servants should banish any ideas that the horrors of the slave ship are to be accounted for by the fact that the victims were Negroes. "It is hardly possible," she writes, "to believe that human nature could be so depraved, as to treat fellow creatures in such a manner for so little gain." 58

The

transportation of servants and convicts produced a powerful vested interest in England. When the Colonial Board

was created

in 1661,

not the

least

important of

its

duties

was

the control of the trade in indentured servants. In 1664 a commission was appointed, headed by the King's brother, to ex-

amine and report upon the exportation of servants. In 1670 an act prohibiting the transportation of English prisoners overseas rejected; another bill against the stealing of children came

was

to nothing. In the transportation of felons, a whole hierarchy, from courtly secretaries and grave judges down to the jailors

and turnkeys, insisted on having a share in the spoils. 69 It has been suggested that it was humanity for his fellow country-

men and men

of his

own

color which dictated the planter's 60 Of this humanity there is not

preference for the Negro a trace in the records of the time, at least as far as the plantation colonies and commercial production were concerned. Atslave.

the procetempts to register emigrant servants and regularize dure of transportation thereby giving full legal recognition to the system were evaded. The leading merchants and public

were all involved in the practice. The penalty for manin the pillory, but no missiles from the stealing was exposure Such opposition as there was came spectators were tolerated. from the masses. It was enough to point a finger at a woman in the streets of London and call her a "spirit" to start a riot. This was the situation in England when Jeffreys came to Bristol on his tour of the West to clean up the remnants of officials

ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY Monmouth's

rebellion. Jeffreys has

15

down to posof an arbitrary textbooks as the

been handed

terity as a "butcher," the tyrannical deputy king, and his legal visitation is recorded in the

"Bloody Assizes." They had one redeeming feature. Jeffreys vowed that he had come to Bristol with a broom to sweep the city clean, and his wrath fell on the kidnapers who infested the highest municipal offices. The merchants and justices were in the habit of straining the law to increase the number of

who

felons

owned

could be transported to the sugar plantations they

in the

West

Indies.

They would

terrify petty offenders

with the prospect of hanging and then induce them to plead for transportation. Jeffreys turned upon the mayor, complete in scarlet and furs, who was about to sentence a pickpocket to transportation to Jamaica, forced him, to the great astonishment of Bristol's worthy citizens, to enter the prisoners' dock,

common

and hectored Mr. Mayor, you I meane, Kidnapper, and an old Justice of the Peace on the bench. ... I doe not knowe him, an old knave: he goes to the taverne, and like a

him

felon, to plead guilty or not guilty,

in characteristic language: "Sir,

for a pint of sack he will bind people servants to the Indies at the taverne. kidnapping knave! I will have his ears off, before

A

goe forth of towne. Kidnapper, you, I mean, Sir. ... If it were not in respect of the sword, which is over your head, I would send you to Newgate, you kidnapping knave. You are I

.

.

.

worse than the pick-pockett who stands there. ... I hear the trade of kidnapping is of great request. They can discharge a felon or a traitor, provided they will go to Mr. Alderman's was fined one plantation at the West Indies." The mayor of the loss but from thousand pounds, apart dignity and the merchants lost in their fear aroused hearts, the nothing their 61 gains were left inviolate. According to one explanation, Jeffreys' insults were the result of intoxication or insanity. 62 It is not improbable that they were connected with a complete reversal of mercantilist thought on the question of emigration, as a result of the internal development of Britain herself. By the end of the seventeenth century

the stress had shifted from the accumulation of the precious metals as the aim of national economic policy to the develop-

l6


ment of industry within the country, the promotion of employment and the encouragement of exports. The mercantilists argued that the best way to reduce costs, and thereby compete with other countries, was to pay low wages, which a large pop-

The fear of overpopulation at the bethe of seventeenth ginning century gave way to a fear of underin the middle of the same century. The essential population condition of colonization emigration from the home country ulation tended to ensure.

now manded

ran counter to the principle that national interest dea large population at home. Sir Josiah Child denied that

emigration to America had weakened England, but he was forced to admit that in this view he was in a minority of posin a thousand, while he endorsed the general opinion sibly one that "whatever tends to the depopulating of a

the impoverishment of

it."

03

kingdom tends

to

Jeffreys' unusual humanitarianism be attributed rather to economic

appears less strange and may than to spirituous considerations. His patrons, the Royal Family, had already given their patronage to the Royal African Com-

pany and the Negro

slave trade.

For the surplus population

New

World the British had needed to people the colonies in the 1680 turned to Africa, and by they already had positive evidence, in Barbados, that the African was satisfying the necessities

of production better than the European. status of these servants became progressively worse in

The

the plantation colonies. Servitude, originally a free personal relation based on voluntary contract for a definite period of service, in lieu of transportation and maintenance, tended to relation which asserted a control of varypass into a property ing extent over the bodies and liberties of the person during 64 service as if he were a thing. Eddis, writing on the eve of the Revolution, found the servants groaning "beneath a worse than 65 Egyptian bondage." In Maryland servitude developed into an institution approaching in some respects chattel slavery. 60 Of Pennsylvania it has been said that "no matter how kindly they may have been treated in particular cases, or how voluntarily they may have entered into the relation, as a class and when once bound, indentured servants were temporarily chattels." 67 On the sugar plantations of Barbados the servants spent their


IJ

time "grinding at the mills and attending the furnaces, or digging in this scorching island; having nothing to feed on

(notwithstanding their hard labour) but potatoe roots, nor to drink, but water with such roots washed in it, besides the bread

and tears of their own afflictions; being bought and sold still from one planter to another, or attached as horses and beasts for the debts of their masters, being whipt at the whipping for their masters' (as posts rogues,) pleasure, and sleeping, in 68 worse than hogs in England. ." As Professor Harlow concludes, the weight of evidence proves incontestably that the conditions under which white labor was procured and utilized in Barbados were "persistently severe, occasionally dis09 honourable^nd generally a disgrace to the English name." English officialdom, however, took the view that servitude was not too bad, and the servant in Jamaica was better off than

sties

.

.

husbandman in England. "It is a place as grateful to you for trade as any part of the world. Tt is not so odious as it is 70 But there was some sensitiveness on the quesrepresented." the

tion.

The Lords

use of the

word

of Trade and Plantations, in 1676, opposed the "servitude" as a mark of bondage and slavery,

and suggested "service"

instead. 71

The

institution

was not

af-

by the change. The hope has been expressed that the white servants were spared the lash so liberally bestowed upon fected

72 Negro comrades. They had no such good fortune. Since they were bound for a limited period, the planter had less

their

interest in their welfare than in that of the

Negroes who were

perpetual servants and therefore "the most useful appurtenances" of a plantation. 73 Eddis found the Negroes "almost in

every instance, under more comfortable circumstances than the whom the rigid planter exercises an

miserable European, over

74 The servants were regarded by the severity." "white trash," and were bracketed with the Negroes planters as as laborers. "Not one of these colonies ever was or ever can be

inflexible

brought to any considerable improvement without a supply of white servants and Negroes," declared the Council of Mont75 In a European society in which subordination serrat in i68o. was considered essential, in which Burke could speak of the

working

classes as "miserable

sheep" and Voltaire as "canaille,"

l8


and Linguet condemn the worker to the use of his physical strength alone, for "everything would be lost once he knew that he had a mind" 76 in such a it is to society unnecessary seek for apologies for the condition of the white servant in the colonies.

Defoe bluntly stated that the white servant was a slave. 77 He was not. The servant's loss of liberty was of limited duration, the Negro was slave for life. The servant's status could not descend to his offspring, Negro children took the status of the The master at no time had absolute control over the and person liberty of his servant as he had over his slave. The mother.

servant had rights, limited but recognized by law and inserted in a contract. He enjoyed, for instance, a limited right to property. In actual law the conception of the servant a a

piece of property never went beyond that of personal estate and never reached the stage of a chattel or real estate. The laws in the colonies maintained this rigid distinction

and

visited co-

habitation between the races with severe penalties. The servant could aspire, at the end of his term, to a plot of land, though,

Wertenbaker points out for Virginia, it was not a legal 78 and conditions varied from colony to right, colony. The serf in Europe could therefore hope for an early freedom in America which villeinage could not afford. The freed servants became small yeomen farmers, settled in the back a as

country, democratic force in a society of large aristocratic plantation owners, and were the pioneers in westward expansion. That

was why Jefferson in America, as Saco in Cuba, favored the introduction of European servants instead of African slaves as 79 tending to democracy rather than aristocracy.

The

institution of white servitude,

however, had grave

dis-

advantages. Postlethwayt, a rigid mercantilist, argued that white laborers in the colonies would tend to create rivalry with the mother country in manufacturing. Better black slaves on plantations than white servants in industry, 80 The courage aspirations to independence.

which would ensupply moreover

was becoming increasingly difficult, and the need of the plantations outstripped the English convictions. In addition, merchants were involved in vexatious and

many

costly proceedings


19

from people signifying their willingness to emigrate, acuncepting food and clothes in advance, and then sueing for lawful detention. 81 Indentured servants were not forthcoming in sufficient quantities to replace those who had served their term. On the plantations, escape was easy for the white servant; arising

less

easy for the

Negro who,

stay in his locality

if

freed, tended, in self-defence, to

where he was well known and

less

likely

to

vagrant or runaway slave. The servant exthe end land at of his contract; the Negro, in a strange pected environment, conspicuous by his color and features, and igno-

be apprehended

as a

rant of the white man's language and ways, could be kept permanently divorced from the land. Racial differences made it easier to justify

and rationalize Negro slavery, to exact the

mechanical obedience of a plough-ox or a cart-horse, to demand that resignation and that complete moral and intellectual sub-

which alone make slave labor possible. Finally, and this was the decisive factor, the Negro slave was cheaper. The money which procured a white man's services for ten years could buy a Negro for life. 82 As the governor of Barbados stated, the Barbadian planters found by experience that "three jection

work better and cheaper than one white man." 83 But the experience with white servitude had been invaluable. Kidnaping in Africa encountered no such difficulties as were encountered in England. Captains and ships had the experience of the one trade to guide them in the other. Bristol, the center of the servant trade, became one of the centers of the slave trade. Capital accumulated from the one financed the other. White servitude was the historic base upon which Negro slavery was constructed. The felon-drivers in the plantations became without effort slave-drivers. "In significant numbers," writes Professor Phillips, "the Africans were latecomers fitted blacks

into a system already developed." 84

Here, then, is the origin of Negro slavery. The reason was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor. As compared with Indian and white labor, Negro slavery was eminently superior. "In each case," writes Bassett, discussing

North

Carolina, "it


2O

was a

survival of the

fittest.

Both Indian slavery and white

down

servitude were to go

before the black man's superior 85 The features of the endurance, docility, and labor capacity.' man, his hair, color and dentifrice, his "subhuman" charac7

teristics so

widely pleaded, were only the simple economic

later rationalizations

needed labor justify and resorted to Negro labor because it was cheapest and best. This was not a theory, it was a practical conclusion deduced from the personal experience of the planter. He would have to

a

fact: that the colonies

gone to the moon, if necessary, for labor. Africa was nearer than the moon, nearer too than the more populous countries of India and China. But their turn was to come. This white servitude

is

of cardinal importance for an underWorld and the

standing of the development of the

Negro's place old

myth

in that

development.

It

New

completely explodes the

that the whites could not stand the strain of manual

labor in the climate of the

New World

and

that,

for this

reason and this reason alone, the European powers had reMissiscourse to Africans. The argument is quite untenable.

A

that "only black men and mules can face the sun in July." But the whites faced the sun for well over a hundred years in Barbados, and the Salzburgers of

sippi dictum

will

have

it

Georgia indignantly denied that to them. 80

The Caribbean

rice cultivation

was harmful

islands are well within the tropical

zone, but their climate is more equable than tropical, the temperature rarely exceeds 80 degrees though it remains uniform the whole year round, and they are exposed to the gentle winds from the sea. The unbearable humidity of an August day in

some parts of the United States has no equal in the islands. Moreover only the southern tip of Florida in the United States is actually tropical, yet Negro labor flourished in Virginia and Carolina. The southern parts of the United States are not hotter than South Italy or Spain, and de Tocqueville asked why the

European could not work there 87

as well as in

those

two coun-

When Whitney

invented his cotton gin, it was confidently expected that cotton would be produced by free labor on small farms, and it was, in fact, so produced. 88 Where the white tries?

farmer was ousted, the enemv was not the climate but the slave


21

and the white farmer moved westward, until the expanding plantation sent him on his wanderings again. Writplantation,

ing in 1857,

Weston pointed out

that labor in the fields of the

New

Orleans the heavy outdoor work in were performed by whites, without any ill consequences. "No part of the continental borders of the Gulf of Mexico," he wrote, "and none of the islands which separate it from the

extreme South and

all

89

ocean, need be abandoned to the barbarism of negro slavery." In our own time we who have witnessed the dispossession of Negroes by white sharecroppers in the South and the mass

of migration of Negroes from the South to the colder climates of and other industrial centers New York, Pittsburgh Detroit, the North, can no longer accept the convenient rationalization that

Negro

labor

was employed on the

slave plantations be-

cause the climatS was too rigorous for the constitution of the

white man.

A

constant and steady emigration of poor whites from Spain

to Cuba, to the very end of Spanish dominion, characterized Spanish colonial policy. Fernando Ortiz has drawn a striking

contrast between the role of tobacco and sugar in

Tobacco was

a free

Cuban

his-

white industry intensively cultivated

tory. on small farms; sugar was a black slave industry extensively cultivated on large plantations. He further compared the free

Cuban tobacco industry with

its

00 slave Virginian counterpart.

What

determined the difference was not climate but the economic structure of the two areas. The whites could hardly have endured the tropical heat of Cuba and succumbed to the

.

In Puerto Rico, the jibaro, the poor tropical heat of Barbados. white peasant, is still the basic type, demonstrating, in the words of Grenfell Price, how erroneous is the belief that after

three generations the white man cannot breed in the tropics. 91 Similar white communities have survived in the Caribbean, from the earliest settlements right down to our own times, in the

Dutch West Indian

islands of

Saba and

St.

Martin. For some

Thomas not only fishermen but as agriculturalists, forming today the "largest in the island. 92 As Dr. Price concludes: single farming class" sixty years

French

settlers

have lived

in St.

as

"It appears that

northern whites can retain a

fair

standard for

22


generations in the trade- wind tropics the worst forms of tropical disease,

if

if

the location

is

free

from

the economic return

is

adequate, and if the community is prepared to undertake hard, 03 Over one hundred years ago a number of physical work."

German

emigrants settled in Seaford, Jamaica. They survive contradictvisible signs of deterioration, flatly of the survival belief the as of to the ing popular possibility northern white in the tropics. 94 Wherever, in short, tropical today, with no

agriculture remained

on

a small

farming

basis,

whites not only

survived but prospered. Where the whites disappeared, the cause was not the climate but the supersession of the small farm by the large plantation, with its consequent demand for a large

and steady supply of labor. The climatic theory of the plantation

is

thus nothing but a

rationalization. In an excellent essay on the subject Professor Edgar Thompson writes: "The plantation is not to be ac-

counted for by climate. It is a political institution." It is, we might add, more: it is an economic institution. The climatic theory "is part of an ideology which rationalizes and naturalizes an existing social and economic order, and this everywhere seems to be an order in which there is a race problem." 95

The

half history of Australia clinches the argument. Nearly In lies the zone. within of this island continent tropical part of this tropical area, the state of

Queensland, the chief crop is sugar. When the industry began to develop, Australia had a choice of two alternatives: black labor or white labor. The

commonwealth began

its

sugar cultivation in the usual

way

with imported black labor from the Pacific islands. Increasing demands, however, were made for a white Australia policy, and in the twentieth century non-white immigration was prohibited. It

is

irrelevant to consider here that as a result the cost

of production of Australian sugar

is

prohibitive, that the in-

and survives only behind the Chinese wall dustry of Australian autarchy. Australia was willing to pay a high price in order to remain a white man's country. Our sole concern here with the question is that this price was paid from the pockets of the Australian consumer and not in the physical degeneration of the Australian worker. is

artificial


23

Labor in the Queensland sugar industry today is wholly white. "Queensland," writes H. L. Wilkinson, "affords the only example in the world of European colonization in the tropics

on an extensive

does more; it shows a large European the whole of the work of its civilization from population doing the meanest service, and most exacting manual labor, to the scale. It

96 To such an extent has science highest form of intellectualism." that Australian scientists today argue exploded superstition

that the only condition on which white men and women can remain healthy in the tropics is that they must engage in hard

manual work. Where they have done so, as in Queensland, "the most rigorous scientific examination," according to the Australian Medical Congress in 1920, "failed to show any organic changes in white residents which enabled them to be dis97 tinguished from residents of temperate climates."

had nothing to do with climate. Its words: in the Caribbean, Sugar; on the mainland, Tobacco and Cotton. A change in the economic structure produced a corresponding change in the labor supply. The fundamental fact was "the creation of an inferior 98 social and economic organization of exploiters and exploited." and and cotton the Sugar, tobacco, required large plantation hordes of cheap labor, and the small farm of the ex-indentured white servant could not possibly survive. The tobacco of the small farm in Barbados was displaced by the sugar of the large plantation. The rise of the sugar industry in the Caribbean was

Negro

slavery, thus,

origin can be expressed

in three

the signal for a gigantic dispossession of the small farmer. Barbados in 1645 had 11,200 small white farmers and 5,680 Negro slaves; in 1667 there were 745 large plantation owners and

had 18,300 whites fit to bear white farmers were squeezed only 8,300." out. The planters continued to offer inducements to newcomers, but they could no longer offer the main inducement, land. White servants preferred the other islands where they 82,023 slaves. In 1645

arms, in 1667

t ê island

The

could hope for land, to Barbados, where they were sure there was none. 100 In desperation the planters proposed legislation which would prevent a landowner from purchasing more land,

24


compel Negroes and servants to wear dimity manufactured in Barbados (what would English mercantilists have said?) to provide employment for the poor whites, and prevent Negroes from being taught a trade. 101 The governor of Barbados in 1695 drew a pitiful picture of these ex-servants. Without fresh meat or rum, "they are domineered over and used like dogs, and this in time will

undoubtedly drive away all the commonalty of the white people." His only suggestion was to give the right to elect members of the Assembly to every white man owning

two

acres of land. Candidates for election

give the poor miserable creatures a visions

and such things

little

would "sometimes

rum and

fresh pro-

would be of nourishment to them," votes and elections were held every as

order to get their 102 It is not year. surprising that the exodus continued. in

The poor

whites began their travels, disputing their

way

all

over the Caribbean, from Barbados to Nevis, to Antigua, and thence to Guiana and Trinidad, and ultimately Carolina. Every-

where they were pursued and dispossessed by the same inexorable economic force, sugar; and in Carolina they were safe from cotton only for a hundred years. Between 1672 and 1708 the white men in Nevis decreased by more than three-fifths, the black population more than doubled. Between 1672 and 1727 the white males of Montserrat declined by more than twothirds, in the same period the black population increased more than eleven times. 103 "The more they buie," said the Barbadians, referring to their slaves, "the more they are able to buye, for in a yeare and a halfe they will earne with God's blessing as much 104 as King Sugar had begun his depredations, changthey cost." ing flourishing commonwealths of small farmers into vast sugar

owned by a camarilla of absentee capitalist magnates and worked by a mass of alien proletarians. The plantation economy had no room for poor whites; the proprietor or over-

factories

seer, a

more prosperous

physician on the

their families, these

were

plantations, possibly

sufficient. "If a state,"

wrote Weston,

"could be supposed to be made up of continuous plantations, the white race would be not merely starved out, but literally 105 squeezed out."

The

resident planters, apprehensive of the blacks, passed De-

growing disproportion between whites and

ORIGIN OF NEGRO SLAVERY Laws

25

compel absentees, under penalty of fines, to The absentees preferred to pay the fines. In the West Indies today the poor whites survive in the "Redlegs" of Barbados, pallid, weak and depraved from in-breeding, strong rum, insufficient food and abstinence from manual labor. For, as Merivale wrote, "in a country where Negro slavery 106 prevails extensively, no white is industrious." It was the triumph, not of geographical conditions, as Harlow contends, 107 but of economic. The victims were the Negroes in Africa and the small white farmers. The increase of wealth for the few whites was as phenomenal as the increase of

ficiency

to

keep white servants.

misery for the many blacks. The Barbados crops in 1650, over a twenty-month period, were worth over three million 108 about fifteen millions in modern money. In 1666 pounds, Barbados was computed to be seventeen times as rich as it had

been before the planting of sugar. "The buildings in 1643 were mean, with things only for necessity, but in 1666, plate, jewels, and household stuff were estimated at 500,000, their buildings fair and beautiful, and their houses like castles, their sugar houses and negroes huts show themselves from the sea like so 109 The price of many small towns, each defended by its castle." land skyrocketed. of five hundred acres which plantation

very

A

sold for

The

400

in 1640 fetched

110 7,000 for a half-share in i648.

one Captain Waterman, comprising eight hundred had one time been split up among no less than forty at acres, 111 For sugar was and is essentially a capitalist unproprietors. dertaking, involving not only agricultural operations but the crude stages of refining as well. A report on the French sugar estate of

make ten hogsheads of sugar required as great an expenditure in beasts of burden, mills and utensils as to make a hundred. 112 James Knight of Jamaica estimated that

islands stated that to

118 required four hundred acres to start a sugar plantation. According to Edward Long, another planter and the historian

it

of the island, it needed 5,000 to start a small plantation of three hundred acres, producing from thirty to fifty hogsheads of sugar a year, 14,000 for a plantation of the same size pro114 There could be only two ducing one hundred hogsheads. classes in such a society, wealthy planters and oppressed slaves.


26

The moral

is

reinforced

by

a consideration of the history of

was based not on Virginia, where the plantation economy Professor Wertenof The researches tobacco. but on sugar baker have exploded the legend that Virginia from the outset was an aristocratic dominion. In the early seventeenth century about two-thirds of the landholders had neither slaves nor indentured servants. The strength of the colony lay in its numerous white yeomanry. Conditions became worse as the market for tobacco was glutted by Spanish competition and the Virginians demanded in wrath that something be done about "those petty English plantations in the savage islands in the West Indies" through which quantities of Spanish tobacco

reached England. 115 None the less, though prices continued to fall, the exports of Virginia and Maryland increased more than

The

explanation lay in two words Negro slavery, which cheapened the cost of production. Negro slaves, one-twentieth of the population in 1670, six

times between 1663 and 1699.

were one-fourth

from being an insignificant of the colony, had become the very

in 1730. "Slavery,

factor in the economic

life

foundation upon which

it

was

established."

There was

still

room

in Virginia, as there was farmer, but land was useless to

not in Barbados, for the small him if he could not compete with slave labor. So the Virginian peasant, like the Barbadian, was squeezed out. "The Virginia which had formerly been so largely the land of the

little

farmer, had

become the land of

Masters and Slaves. For aught else there was no room." 116 The whole future history of the Caribbean is nothing more i's and a crossing of the t's. It happened and French than in the Spanish islands, where the process was delayed until the advent of the dollar diplomacy of our own time. Under American capital we have witnessed the transformation of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic into huge sugar factories (though the large plantation, especially in Cuba, was not unknown under the Spanish regime), owned abroad and operated by alien labor, on

than a dotting of the

earlier in the British

the British

West

Indian pattern. That this process

is

taking place

with free labor and in nominally independent areas (Puerto Rico excepted) helps us to see in its true light the first im-


2J

portation of Negro slave labor in the British Caribbean a phase in the history of the plantation. In the words of Professor Phillips, the plantation

system was

than slavery was upon

it.

...

The

u

less

dependent upon slavery plantation system formed, so

and social frame of government ., code of written laws enacted for that pur-

to speak, the industrial

while slavery was

a

.

.

317

pose."

Where

the plantation did not develop, as in the

Cuban

tobacco industry, Negro labor was rare and white labor predominated. The liberal section of the Cuban population conthe cessation of the Negro slave trade and sistently advocated the introduction of white immigrants. Saco, mouthpiece of the liberals, called for the immigration of workers "white and free,

from all parts of the world, of all races, provided they have a white face and can do honest labor." 118 Sugar defeated Saco. It was the sugar plantation, with its servile base, which retarded white immigration in nineteenth century Cuba as it had banned it

in

Saint

seventeenth century Barbados and eighteenth century Domingue. No sugar, no Negroes. In Puerto Rico, which

developed relatively late as a genuine plantation, and where, before the American regime, sugar never dominated the lives

and thoughts of the population as it did elsewhere, the poor white peasants survived and the Negro slaves never exceeded fourteen per cent of the population. 119 Saco wanted to "whiten" the Cuban social structure. 120 Negro slavery blackened that structure all over the Caribbean while the blood of the Negro slaves reddened the Atlantic and both its shores. Strange that an article like sugar, so sweet and necessary to human existence, should have occasioned such crimes and bloodshed!

After emancipation the British planters thought of white imThe governor of British Guiana wrote in glowing terms in 1845 about Portuguese immigrants from Madeira. 121 But though the Portuguese came in large numbers, as is attested by their strength even today in Trinidad migration, even convicts.

and British Guiana, they preferred retail trade to plantation The governor of Jamaica was somewhat more cautious in his opinion of British and Irish immigrants. Sickness had broken out, wages were too low, the experiment could only

labor.


28

be partially useful in making an immediate addition to the laboring population, and therefore indiscriminate importation was inadvisable. 122

The European immigrants in St. Christopher bewailed their fate piteously, and begged to be permitted to return home. "There is not the slightest reluctance on our part to continue in the island for an honest livelihood

by

pleasing

our employers by our industrious labour if the climate agreed with us, but unfortunately it do not; and we are much afraid

we

continue longer in this injurious hot climate (the West Indies) death will be the consequence to the principal part of " 123 us if

was not the climate which was

against the experiment. the Slavery had created pernicious tradition that manual labor was the badge of the slave and the sphere of influence of the It

Negro. The first thought of the Negro slave after emancipation was to desert the plantation, where he could, and set up for himself where land was available. White plantation workers could hardly have existed in a society side by side with Negro peasants. The whites would have prospered if small farms had been encouraged. But the abolition of slavery did not mean the destruction of the sugar plantation. The emancipation of the the inadequacy of the white worker put the sugar

Negro and

where he had been in the seventeenth century. needed labor. Then he had moved from Indian to white to Negro. Now, deprived of his Negro, he turned back to white and then to Indian, this time the Indian from the East. India replaced Africa; between 1833 and 1917, Trinidad imported 145,000 East Indians* and British Guiana 238,000. The the other Caribbean colonies. Bepattern was the same for tween 1854 and 1883 39,000 Indians were introduced into Guadeloupe; between 1853 and 1924, over 22,000 laborers from the Dutch East Indies and 34,000 from British India were carried to Dutch Guiana. 124 Cuba, faced with a shortage of planter back to

He

still

Negro *This

slaves,

is

adopted the interesting experiment of using

the correct

West

Indian description.

It is

them, as is done in this country, "Hindus." Not Hindus. There are many Moslems in the West Indies.

call

quite incorrect to East Indians are

all


2Q

with indentured Chinese coolies, 125 and after emancipation turned to the teeming thousands of Haiti and the British West Indies. Between 1913 and 1924 Cuba imported 217,000 laborers from Haiti, Jamaica and Puerto Rico. 126 What Saco wrote a hundred years ago was still true,

Negro

slaves side

by

side

sixty years after Cuba's abolition of slavery. Negro slavery therefore was only a solution, in certain historical circumstances, of the Caribbean labor problem. Sugar

meant labor

at times that labor has

been

slave, at

free; at times black, at other times

other times

white or brown

nominally or yellow. Slavery in no way implied, in any scientific sense, the inferiority of the Negro. Without it the great development of the Caribbean sugar plantations, between 1650 and 1850, would have been impossible.

2

-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO SLAVE TRADE

THE NEGRO

SLAVES were "the strength and sinews of this westNegro slavery demanded the Negro slave trade. Therefore the preservation and improvement of the trade to Africa was "a matter of very high importance to this kingdom and the plantations thereunto belonging." 2 And thus it remained, up to 1783, a cardinal object of British foreign policy. The first English slave-trading expedition was that of Sir John Hawkins in 1562. Like so many Elizabethan ventures, it was a buccaneering expedition, encroaching on the papal arbitration of 1493 which made Africa a Portuguese monopoly. The slaves obtained were sold to the Spaniards in the West tern world." 1

The

English slave trade remained desultory and perof British colonies functory in the Caribbean and the introduction of the sugar industry. When by 1660 the political and social upheavals of the Civil

Indies.

in character until the establishment

War

period came to an end, England was ready to embark wholeheartedly on a branch of commerce whose importance

to her sugar and her tobacco colonies in the New World was beginning to be fully appreciated. In accordance with the economic policies of the Stuart monarchy, the slave trade was entrusted to a monopolistic company, the Company of Royal Adventurers trading" to Africa, 3

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLAVE TRADE

31

incorporated in 1663 for a period of one thousand years. The Earl of Clarendon voiced the enthusiasm current at the time, that the company would "be found a model equally to ad-

vance the trade of England with that of any other company, even that of the East Indies." 8 The optimistic prediction was not realized, largely as a result of losses and dislocations caused by war with the Dutch, and in 1672 a new company, the Royal African Company, was created.

The

policy of

monopoly however remained unchanged and

provoked determined resistance in two quarters the merchants in the outports, struggling to break down the monopoly of the capital; and the planters in the colonies, demanding free trade in blacks as as one hunand with as much

gusto vociferously dred and fifty years later they opposed free trade in sugar.

The

were divided on the question. Postlemost of the mercantilist writers, wanted the thwayt, prolific 4 the whole company, company and nothing but the company. Joshua Gee emphasized the frugality and good management of the private trader. 5 Davenant, one of the ablest economists and 6 financial experts of his day, at first opposed the monopoly, and then later changed his mind, arguing that other nations found organized companies necessary, and that the company would "stand in place of an academy, for training an indefinite number mercantilist intelligentsia

of people in the regular knowledge of all matters relating to the several branches of the African trade." 7

The

monopoly was succinctly stated by the free or interlopers as they were then called to the Board of Trade in 1711. The monopoly meant that the purchase of British manufactures for sale on the coast of Africa, control case against

traders

of ships employed in the slave trade, sale of Negroes to the of plantation produce "this great plantations, importation

and navigation," on which the livelihood, direct of and indirect, many thousands depended, would be under 8 the control of a single company. The planters in their turn complained of the quality, prices, and irregular deliveries, and circle of trade

9 refused to pay their debts to the company.

There was nothing unique of the slave trade.

in this opposition to the

monopoly Monopoly was an ugly word, which con-

32


up memories of the political tyranny of Charles I, though no "free trader" of the time could have had the slightest idea of the still uglier visions the word would conjure up one hundred and fifty years later when it was associated with jured

the economic tyranny of the West Indian sugar planter. But in the last decade of the seventeenth century the economic curthe rent was flowing against monopoly. In 1672 definitely

was thrown open and the monopoly of the Eastland Company overthrown. One of the most important consequences of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the expulsion of the Stuarts was the impetus it gave to the principle of free Baltic trade

trade. In 1698 the Royal African Company lost its monopoly and the right of a free trade in slaves was recognized as a funda-

mental and natural right of Englishmen. In the same year the Merchant Adventurers of London were deprived of their monopoly of the export trade in cloth, and a year later the monopoly of the Muscovy Company was abrogated and trade

made

one particular did the freedom from the freedom accorded in other trades the commodity involved was man. The Royal African Company was powerless against the competition of the free traders. It soon went bankrupt and had to depend on parliamentary subsidy. In 1731 it abandoned the slave trade and confined itself to the trade in ivory and gold dust. In 1750 a new organization was established, called the Company of Merchants trading to Africa, with a board of nine directors, three each from London, Bristol and Liverpool. Of to Russia

accorded

free.

Only

in

in the slave trade differ

the slave traders listed in 1755, 237 belonged to Bristol, 147 to 10 London, and 89 to Liverpool.

With

and the increasing demands of the sugar of the British slave trade rose enorthe volume plantations, free trade

The Royal

African Company, between 1680 and 1686, 11 transported an annual average of 5,000 slaves. In the first nine years of free trade Bristol alone shipped 160,950 Negroes to the 12 In 1760, 146 ships sailed from British ports sugar plantations.

mously.

for Africa, with a capacity for 36,000 slaves; 18 in 1771, the number of ships had increased to 190 and the number of slaves

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLAVE TRADE to 47,ooo. 14

The importation into Jamaica from

610,000, and into

all

33

1700 to 1786 was

has been estimated that the total import of slaves the British colonies between 1680 and 1786 was over two it

million. 15

But the slave trade was more than a means to an end, it was an end in itself. The British slave traders provided the

also

necessary laborers not only for their own plantations but for those of their rivals. The encouragement thereby given to was not to common sense but to strict foreigners contrary only mercantilism, but, in so far as this foreign slave trade meant the Spanish colonies, there was some defence for it. Spain was al-

ways, up to the nineteenth century, dependent on foreigners for her slaves, either because she adhered to the papal arbitra-

which excluded her from

Africa, or because of a lack of and the capital necessary goods for the slave trade. The of privilege supplying these slaves to the Spanish colonies, called the Asiento, became one of the most highly coveted and tion

bitterly contested plums of international diplomacy. British mercantilists defended the trade, legal or illegal, with the Spanish colonies, in Negroes and manufactured goods, as of distinct value in that the Spaniards paid in coin, and thus the in of bullion was of increased. The supply England

supply

French colonies could plead no such justification. Here it was clearly a clash of interest between the British slave trader and the British sugar planter, as the trade in the export

slaves to the

of British machinery after 1825 led to a clash of interests be-

tween

British shippers

and British producers. right and the slave trader wrong. But

The sugar planter was

was noticed only condemned the Asiento Postlethwayt

in the first half of the eighteenth century this

the very discerning. of 1713 as scandalous and ruinous, an exchange of the substance for the shadow: "a treaty could scarce have been con16 trived of so little benefit to the nation." During the nine

by

months of

Cuba in the Seven Years' War, were introduced, over one-sixth of the importa-

British occupation of

10,700 slaves

tions from 1512 to 1763, over one-third of the importations from 1763 to I789. 17 Forty thousand Negroes were introduced into Guadeloupe by the British in three years during the same

34


war. 18

The Privy Council Committee of 1788 paid special attention to the fact that of the annual British export of slaves from Africa two-thirds were disposed of to foreigners. 19 Dur-

ing the whole of the eighteenth century, according to Bryan Edwards, British slave traders furnished the sugar planters of France and Spain with half a million Negroes, justifying his doubts of "the wisdom and policy of this branch of the African commerce." 20 Britain was not only the foremost slave trading country in the world; she had become, in Ramsay 's phrase, the "honourable slave carriers" of her rivals. 21

The

story of this increase in the slave trade is mainly the the rise of Liverpool. Liverpool's first slave trader, a of story modest vessel of thirty tons, sailed for Africa in 1709. This was the

first

step

on a road which, by the end of the century,

gained Liverpool the distinction of being the greatest slave trading port in the Old World. Progress at first was slow. The

town was more

interested in the

smuggling trade to the Spanish

colonies and the tobacco trade. But, according to a historian of the town, it soon forged ahead by its policy of cutting down

expenses to a minimum, which enabled it to undersell its English and continental rivals. In 1730 it had fifteen ships in the slave trade; in 1771 seven times as The many. proportion of slave ships to the total shipping owned by the port was slightly over one in a hundred in 1709; in 1730 it was one-eleventh; in 22 In 1795 Liverpool had 1763, one-fourth; in 1771, one-third.

five-eighths of the British slave trade and three-sevenths of the slave trade. 23

whole European

The

"horrors" of the Middle Passage have been exaggerated. For this the British abolitionists are in large part responsible. There is something that smacks of ignorance or hypocrisy or

both in the invectives heaped by these men upon a traffic which had in their day become less profitable and less vital to England. A West Indian planter once reminded Parliament that it ill became the elected representative of a country which had pocketed the gains from the slave trade to stigmatize it as a crime. 24 The age which had seen the mortality among indentured servants saw no reason for squeamishness about the mornor did the exploitation of the slaves on the tality among slaves,


35

the exploitation plantations differ fundamentally from feudal peasant or the treatment of the poor in European cities.

of the

Mutinies and suicides were obviously far more

common on

slave ships than on other vessels, and the brutal treatment and would doubtgreater restrictions on the movements of the slaves

have tended to increase their mortality. But the fundamencauses of this high mortality on the slave ships, as on ships must be carrying indentured servants and even free passengers,

less tal

in epidemics, the inevitable result of the long food and water, and and the difficulty of preserving voyages of in the overcrowding the vessels. The sole practice secondly aim of the slave merchants was to have their decks "well coverd with black ones." 25 It is not uncommon to read of a vessel of 26 90 tons carrying 390 slaves or one of 100 tons carrying 4I4.

found

firstly

Clarkson's investigations in Bristol revealed a sloop of twentyfive tons destined for seventy human beings, and another of a mere eleven tons for thirty slaves. 27 The space allotted to each

on the Atlantic crossing measured five and a half feet in like "rows of books length by sixteen inches in breadth. Packed on shelves," as Clarkson said, chained two by two, right leg and left leg, right hand and left hand, each slave had less room than a man in a coffin. It was like the transportation of black cattle, and where sufficient Negroes were not available cattle were taken on. 28 The slave trader's aim was profit and not the comfort of his victims, and a modest measure in 1788 to regulate slave

the transportation of the slaves in accordance with the capacity of the vessel evoked a loud howl from the slave traders. "If the wrote one to his agent, "it will hurt the alteration takes trade, so

place," will

hope you

make hay while

the sun shines." 29

slave dealer during his residence in journal of one Africa admits that he had "found no place in all these several the Caribes, countrys of England, Ireland, America, Portugal!,

The

been in

Cape de Verd, the Azores or all the places have where I can inlarge my fortune so soon as where I now live." Money made the man. The prodigal who returned home emptyhanded would have to be content with the common name of "the Mallato just come from Guinea." If, however, he returned

the

I

...

36


with

his

hides

all

pockets well stuffed with gold, "that very perticular other infirmities, then you have hapes of frinds of all kinds thronging and wateing for your commands. Then your

known by the name of 'the African gentleman' at every great man's house, and your discource is set down as perticular as 80 Cristopher Culumbus's expedition in America." About 1730

in Bristol

it

was estimated

that

on

a fortunate

voyage the profit on a cargo of about 270 slaves reached 7,000 or 8,000, exclusive of the returns from ivory. In the same year the net return from an "indifferent" cargo which arrived in 31 poor condition was over 5,7oo. Profits of 100 per cent were

not

uncommon

in Liverpool, and one voyage netted a clear of at least 300 per cent. The Lively, fitted out in 1737

profit with a cargo

worth

returned to Liverpool with colonial of exchange totalling 3,080, in addition to 1,307,

produce and bills cotton and sugar remitted later. The Ann, another Liverpool sailed in 1751 with an outfit and a cargo costing 1,604; ship, altogether the voyage produced 3,287 net. A second voyage in 1753 produced 8,000 on a cargo and outfit amounting to 3,153.? An eighteenth century writer has estimated the sterling value of the 303,737 slaves carried in 878 Liverpool ships between 1783 and 1793 at over fifteen million pounds. Deducting commissions and other charges and the cost of the outfit of the ships

and maintenance of the

slaves,

he concluded that the

33 Modern average annual profit was over thirty per cent. scholarship has tended to reproach contemporary observers with undue exaggeration. But even taking the reduced estimates

of Professor Dumbell, the net profit of the Enterprise in 1803, estimated on cost of outfit and cost of cargo, was 38 per cent,

while that of the fortune in 1803, for a cargo of poor slaves, was over 16 per cent. Again with these reduced estimates the in 1802 was thirty-six pounds per slave, profit of the Lottery the Enterprise sixteen pounds, and the fortune five. 34 The

on the whole was estimated to bring Liverpool alone in the eighties a clear profit of 300,000 a year; and it was a common saying in the town of the far less profitable West

slave trade

Indian trade that

if

one ship in three came

in a

man was no


37

if two came in he was a good gainer. On an aver35 five one in miscarried. age only ship Such profits seem small and insignificant compared with the fabulous five thousand per cent the Dutch East India Company cleared at times in its history. It is even probable that the profits from the slave trade were smaller than those made by the British East India Company. Yet these trades were far less im-

loser,

while

portant than the slave trade. The explanation lies in the fact from the mercantilist standpoint the India trade was a bad

that

trade. It drained Britain of bullion to

which

led

many

at the

buy unnecessary wares,

time to think that

"it

were a happie

thing for Christendome that the navigation to the East Indies, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, had never bene found out."36

The

slave trade, on the contrary, was ideal in that it was on by means of British manufactured goods and was, as far as the British colonies were concerned, inseparably connected with the plantation trade which rendered Britain in-

carried

dependent of foreigners for her supply of tropical products. profits of the Dutch spice trade, moreover, were

The enormous

based on a severe restriction of production to ensure high prices, whereas the slave trade created British industry at home

and tropical agriculture

The

in the colonies.

"attractive African meteor," 37 as a

contemporary Liver-

pool historian called it, therefore became immensely popular. Though a large part of the Liverpool slave traffic was monop-

by about ten large firms, many of the small vessels in the trade were fitted out by attorneys, drapers, grocers, barbers and tailors. The shares in the ventures were subdivided, one olized

having one-eighth, another one-fifteenth, a third one-thirtysecond part of a share and so on. "Almost every man in Livera bale will send a pool is a merchant, and he who cannot send order of almost every band-box people is interested in a .

.

.

Guinea cargo, small ships."

it is

to this influenza that (there are) so

many

38

The

purchase of slaves called for a business sense and shrewd discrimination. An Angolan Negro was a proverb for worth-

Coromantines (Ashantis), from the Gold Coast, were good workers but too rebellious; Mandingoes (Senegal) were

lessness;

38


too prone to theft; the Eboes (Nigeria) were timid and despondent; the Pawpaws or Whydahs (Dahomey) were the

most docile and best-disposed. 39 The slaves were required for arduous field work, hence women and children were less valuable than robust males, the former because they were liable to interruptions from work through pregnancies, the latter because they required some attention until able to care for themselves. One Liverpool merchant cautioned his agents against buying

A

40 ruptured slaves, idiots or any "old spider leged quality." West Indian poet advised the slave trader to see that the slave's

broad and his belly not prominent. 41 Buy them young, counselled one overseer from Nevis; "them full grown fellers think it hard to work never being brought up to it they take it to heart and dye or is never good for any

tongue was red,

his chest

42

thing...." But the slave trade

Commerce,"

it

was always a risky business. "The African was written in 1795, "holds forward one con-

stant train of uncertainty, the time of slaving is precarious, the length of the middle passage uncertain, a vessel may be in part,

or wholly cut incidents

may

off, mortalities

be great, and various other be foreseen." 43 Sugar cultiva-

may

arise impossible to

moreover, was a lottery. The debts of the planters, their bankruptcies and demand for long credits gave the merchants many worries. "As you know," wrote one of them, "quick dispatch is the life of trade, I have had many anxious hours this not wish the same again for double the profits I year, I wou'd tion,

may

get

avoided

if all

44 From 1763 to 1778 the London merchants any." connection with the Liverpool slave traders, on the

conviction that the slave trade was being conducted at a loss; between 1772 and 1778 the Liverpool merchants were alleged to have lost 7oo,ooo. 45 Of thirty leading houses which domi-

nated the slave trade from 1773, twelve had by 1788 gone bank46 rupt, while many others had sustained considerable losses.

The American Revolution

seriously interrupted the trade. "Our is at a stand," lamented a Liver-

once extensive trade to Africa pool paper in 1775.

Her

"gallant ships laid

up and

useless,"

47 Liverpool's slave traders turned to privateering, anxiously awaiting the return of peace, with never a thought that they

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLAVE TRADE were witnessing the death

rattles

39

of an old epoch and the birth

pangs of a new. Prior to 1783, however, all classes in English society presented a united front with regard to the slave trade. The monarchy, the government, the church, public opinion in general, supported the slave trade. There were few protests, and those

were

ineffective.

The

Spanish monarchy set the fashion which European royalty followed to the very last. The palace-fortresses of Madrid and Toledo were built out of the payment to the Spanish Crown for licences to transport Negroes. One meeting of the two sovereigns of Spain and Portugal was held in 1701 to discuss the arithmetical problem posed by a contract for ten thousand "tons" of Negroes granted the Portuguese. 48 The Spanish queen, Christina, in the middle of the nineteenth century, openly participated in the slave trade to Cuba. The royal court of Portugal, when it moved to Brazil to avoid capture by

Napoleon, did not find the slave atmosphere of Louis territory uncongenial.

XIV

its

colonial

fully appreciated the im-

portance of the slave trade to metropolitan France and France The plans of the Great Elector for Prussian aggran-

overseas.

dizement included the African slave trade. 49 Hawkins slave trading expedition was launched under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth. She expressed the hope that the Negroes would not be carried off without their free consent, 7

which "would be detestable and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers." But there was as much posthat the transportation of the Negroes would be effected sibility in democratic fashion as there was of collective bargaining. The of Royal Adventurers and the Royal African Company had, as their names imply, royal patronage and, not in60 Acfrequently, investments by members of the royal family.

Company

51 cording to Wilberforce, George III later opposed abolition, and great was the joy of the Liverpool slave traders and Jamaican sugar planters when the royal Duke of Clarence, the future William IV, "took up the cudgills" against abolition 52

and attacked Wilberforce

as either a fanatic

or a hyprocrite. 58

40


The

government, prior to 1783, was uniformly conencouragement of the slave trade. The first great rivals were the Dutch, who monopolized the carrying trade of the British colonies. The bitter commercial warfare of the second half of the seventeenth century between England and British

sistent in its

Holland represented an effort on the part of England to break the commercial net the Dutch had woven about England and her colonies.

"What we want,"

said

Monk

with military blunt-

Dutch now have." 54 Whether it was nominal peace or actual war, a sort of private war was maintained, for thirty years, between the Dutch West India ness, "is

more of the trade

the

Company and the Royal African Company. England's victory over Holland left her face to face with France. Anglo-French warfare, colonial and commercial, is the dominant theme in the history of the eighteenth century. It conflict of rival mercantilisms. The struggle was fought out in the Caribbean, Africa, India, Canada and on the banks of the Mississippi, for the privilege of looting India and for the

was a

control of certain vital and strategic commodities Negroes; 55 Of these areas sugar and tobacco; fish; furs and naval stores. the most important were the Caribbean and Africa; of these

commodities the most important were Negroes and sugar. outstanding single issue

The

was the control of the Asiento. This

privilege was conceded to England by the in 1713 as one result of her victory in the

Treaty of Utrecht

War

of the Spanish

Succession, and produced popular rejoicings in the country. It was the proud boast of Chatham that his war with France had given England almost the entire control of the African coast and of the slave trade.

Colonial assemblies frequently impeded the slave traders by imposing high duties on imported slaves, partly to raise revenue, partly out of their fear of the growing slave population. All such laws were frustrated by the home government, on the insistence of British merchants,

The

who opposed

Board of Trade ruled in

taxes

on

British

708 that it was "absolutely necessary that a trade so beneficial to the kingdom should be carried on to the greatest advantage. The well supplying of the

trade.

1

plantations and colonies with a sufficient

number of negroes

at


4!

reasonable prices is in our opinion the chief point to be considered." 56 In 1773 the Jamaica Assembly, for the purpose of

imraising revenue and to reduce the fear of slave rebellions, of on The merchants a Negro posed duty every imported.

London, Liverpool and Bristol protested, and the Board of Trade condemned the law as unjustifiable, improper and prejudicial to British commerce. The governor was sharply reprimanded for his failure to stop efforts made to "check and discourage a

traffic so beneficial to

the nation." 57

As counsel

for

the sugar planters later argued: "in every variation of our administration of public affairs, in every variation of parties, the policy, in respect to that trade, has been the same. ... In every period of our history, in almost every variation of our politics,

each side and description of party men have, in terms, approved this very trade, voted its encouragement, and considered it as beneficial to the nation." 58

Parliament appreciated the importance of slavery and the slave trade to Britain and her plantations. In 1750 Horace Walpole wrote scornfully of "the British Senate, that temple of liberty,

and bulwark of Protestant Christianity,

.

.

.

pondering methods

effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes." 58 Parliament heard many debates in its stately halls over abolition

to

make more

and emancipation, and its records show the doughty defenders the slave traders and slave owners possessed. Among them was Edmund Burke. The champion of conciliation of America was an accessory to the crucifixion of Africa. In 1772 a bill came

Commons to prohibit the control of the African Committee by outsiders who were not engaged in the slave trade. Burke protested, not against the slave trade, how-

before the House of

ever, but against depriving of the right to vote those who had that right. Only a few, he argued, were so legally purchased we not rather to imitate the accused. set us in

"Ought

pattern

sacred writ, and if ? spare the whole

we

find ten just persons

among them,

to

Let us not then counteract the wisdom of our ancestors, who considered and reconsidered this subject, nor place upon the footing of a monopoly what was intended 60 Bristol could well afford to share in the for a free trade." .

.

.

of the great Liberal. general admiration

42

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY also supported the slave trade. The Spaniards an opportunity of converting the heathen, and the Dominicans and Franciscans were heavily involved in

The Church saw

in

Jesuits,

it

is told sugar cultivation which meant slave-holding. The story of an old elder of the Church in Newport who would in-

variably, the

Sunday following the

arrival of a slaver

from the

God

that "another cargo of benighted beings had been brought to a land where they could have the benefit of a 61 But in general the British planters opgospel dispensation." coast,

thank

posed Christianity for their slaves. It made them more perverse and intractable and therefore less valuable. It meant also instruction in the English language,

get together and plot

which allowed diverse tribes to There were more material

sedition. 62

reasons for this opposition. The governor of Barbados in 1695 attributed it to the planters' refusal to give the slaves Sundays

and

feast

days

off,

63

and

as late as 1823 British public

opinion

was shocked by the planters' rejection of a proposal to give the Negroes one day in the week in order to permit the abolition of the Negro Sunday market. 64 The Church obediently toed the

line.

The

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel pro66 its slaves in Barbados, and

hibited Christian instruction to

branded "Society" on its new slaves to distinguish them from those of the laity; 66 the original slaves were the legacy of 67 Sherlock, later Bishop of London, Christopher Codrington. assured the planters that "Christianity and the embracing of the 68 Gospel does not make the least difference in civil property." Neither did it impose any barriers to clerical activity; for his labors with regard to the Asiento, which he helped to draw up

as a British

Bristol

plenipotentiary at Utrecht, Bishop Robinson of to the see of London. 69 The bells of the

was promoted

Bristol churches pealed merrily

Parliament of Wilberforce's trade. 70

The

slave trader,

on the news of the rejection by

bill

for the abolition of the slave

John Newton, gave thanks

in the Liverpool churches for the success of his last venture before his conversion and implored God's blessing on his next. He established public worship twice every day on his slaver, officiating himself, and kept a day of fasting and prayer, not for the slaves but for the crew. "I never knew," he confessed,


43

"sweeter or more frequent hours of divine communion than in 71 last two voyages to Guinea." The famous Cardinal Mann-

the

ing of the nineteenth century was the son of a rich West Indian merchant dealing in slave-grown produce. 77 Many missionaries

found

it

profitable to drive out Beelzebub

by

Beelze-

bub. According to the most recent English writer on the slave trade, they "considered that the best way in which to remedy

abuse of negro slaves was to set the plantation owners a good

example by keeping slaves and

estates themselves,

accomplish-

ing in this practical manner the salvation of the planters and the advancement of their foundations." 73 The Moravian mission-

without hesitation; the Baptists, one historian writes with charming delicacy, would not allow 74 their earlier missionaries to deprecate ownership of slaves. To the very end the Bishop of Exeter retained his 655 slaves, for whom he received over 12,700 compensation in 183 3. aries in the islands held slaves

Church historians make awkward apologies, that conscience awoke very slowly to the appreciation of the wrongs inflicted by slavery and that the defence of slavery by churchmen "sim76 ply arose from want of delicacy of moral perception." There the churchis no need to make such apologies. The attitude of man was the attitude of the layman. The eighteenth century, like

any other century, could not

limitations.

As Whitefield argued

rise

above

its

economic

in advocating the repeal of

that article of the Georgia charter which forbade slavery, "it plain to demonstration that hot countries cannot be cultivated " without negroes. 77 Quaker nonconformity did not extend to the slave trade. In

is

1756 there were eighty-four Quakers listed as members of the Company trading to Africa, among them the Barclay and Baring 78 Slave dealing was one of the most lucrative investfamilies. as of American Quakers, and the name of a The Willing Quaker, reported from Boston at Sierra

ments of English slaver,

Leone

in 1793,

symbolizes the approval with which the slave

trade was regarded in Quaker circles. The Quaker opposition to the slave trade came first and largely not from England but

from America, and there from the

small rural communities of

the North, independent of slave labor. "It

is

difficult," writes


44

Dr. Gary, "to avoid the assumption that opposition to the slave system was at first confined to a group who gained no an objecdirect advantage from it, and consequently possessed

tive attitude." 80

The Navy was

impressed with the value of the

West

Indian

colonies and refused to hazard or jeopardize their security. The West Indian station was the "station for honour," and many an

admiral had been feted abolition. 81 Earl St.

by

the slave owners.

Vincent pleaded that

life

Rodney opposed on the

plantations

was for the Negro

his a veritable paradise as compared with existence in Africa. 82 Abolition was a "damned and cursed doctrine,

held only

by hypocrites."

83

The

sentigallant admiral's

ments were not entirely divorced from more material con-

He received over 6,000 compensation in 1837 for 84 Nelson's wife was a the ownership of 418 slaves in Jamaica. West Indian, and his views on the slave trade were unequivocal.

siderations.

school, and taught to appreciate Indian possessions, and neither in the field nor the Senate shall their just rights be infringed, while I have an arm to fight in their defence, or a tongue to launch my voice "I

was bred

in the

the value of our

good old

West

damnable doctrine of Wilberforce and

against the

critical allies."

his

hypo-

85

Slavery existed under the very eyes of eighteenth century

Englishmen. An English coin, the guinea, rare though it was and 80 A Westminster goldis, had its origin in the trade to Africa. smith made silver padlocks for blacks and dogs. 87 Busts of blackamoors and elephants, emblematical of the slave trade, adorned the Liverpool Town Hall. The insignia and equip-

were boldly exhibited for sale in the were sold openly at auction. 88 Slaves being valuable property, with title recognized by law, the postmaster was the agent employed on occasions to recapture runaway slaves and advertisements were pub-

ment of the

slave traders

shops and advertised

in the press. Slaves

lished in the official organ of the government. 80 were common. Little black boys were the

captains, fashionable ladies or

The

women

Negro

servants

appendages of slave of easy virtue. Hogarth's

Harlot's Progress, is attended by a Negro boy, and Marguerite Steen's Orabella Burmester typifies eighteenth heroine, in


45

century English opinion in her desire for a little black boy could love as her long-haired kitten. 90 Freed Negroes were conspicuous among London beggars and were known as

whom she St.

Giles blackbirds. So

tary committee was

numerous were they that a parliamenup in 1786 for relieving the black

set

91

poor. "Slaves cannot breathe in England/' wrote the poet Cowper. This was license of the poet. It was held in 1677 t ât "Negroes

being usually bought and sold

and

among merchants,

so

merchan-

might be a property in them." being In 1729 the that baptism did not beGeneral ruled Attorney stow freedom or make any alteration in the temporal condition of the slave; in addition the slave did not become free by being dise,

also

infidels, there

brought to England, and once in England the owner could 92 So eminent an legally compel his return to the plantations. as Sir William Blackstone held that "with respect to authority the master have to the perany right may lawfully acquired service of or will this remain Thomas, John petual exactly in the same state of subjection for life," in England or elsewhere. 93

When,

therefore,

the

assiduous

zeal

of Granville Sharp

brought before Chief Justice Mansfield in 1772 the case of the Negro James Somersett who was about to be returned by his

owner

to Jamaica, there were abundant precedents to prove the impurity of the English air. Mansfield tried hard to evade the issue by suggesting manumission of the slave, and contented

was not "allowed or approved by the law of England" and the Negro must be discharged. Much has been made of this case, by people himself with the modest statement that the case

constantly seeking for triumphs of humanitarianism. Professor Coupland contends that behind the legal judgment lay the

moral judgment and that the Somersett case marked the be94 ginning of the end of slavery throughout the British Empire. translated into modern This is merely poetic sentimentality history. Benjamin Franklin pointed scornfully to "the hypoccrisy of this country, which encourages such a detestable commerce, while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the equity of its courts in setting free a single negro." 95 Two years after the Somersett case the British government disallowed


46

the Jamaican Acts restricting the slave trade. In 1783 a Quaker Parliament. petition for abolition was solemnly rejected by In 1783, moreover, the same Mansfield handed down a decision in the case of the ship *Long. Short of water, the captain

had thrown 132 slaves overboard, and now the owners brought an action for insurance alleging that the loss of the slaves fell within the clause of the policy which insured against "perils of the sea." In Mansfield's view "the case of slaves was the

had been thrown overboard." Damages of were awarded for each slave, and the idea that the thirty pounds and crew be prosecuted for mass homicide never should captain

same

as if horses

entered into the head of any humanitarian. In 1785 another insurance case, involving a British ship and mutiny among the

came before Mansfield. His Daniel judgment was that who were killed in the mutiny or had died of their wounds and bruises were to be paid for by the underwriters; those who had died from jumping overboard or from swallowing water or from "chagrin" were not to be paid for on the ground that they had not died from injuries received in the mutiny; and the underwriters were not responsible for any depreciation in price which resulted to the survivors from the

slaves, all

the slaves

06

mutiny.

The

prosecution of the slave trade was not the work of the of English society. The daughter of a slave trader has asdregs us that her father, though a slave captain and privateer, sured

was a kind and just man, a good father, husband, and friend. 97 This was probably true. The men most active in this traffic were worthy men, fathers of families and excellent citizens. The abolitionist Ramsay acknowledged this with real sorrow, but pleaded that "they had never examined the nature of this commerce and went into it, and acted as others had done before them in it, as a thing of course, for which no account was to be 98 The apology is unnecessary. given in this world or the next." The slave trade was a branch of trade and a very important branch. An officer in the trade once said that "one real view, one minute absolutely spent in the slave rooms on the middle passage would do more for the cause of humanity than the pen of a Robertson, or the whole collective eloquence of the British

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLAVE TRADE senate." 99 This

As

47

was argued later about the was no use saying it was an or unchristian was a lucrative trade, and It unholy occupation. that was enough. 100 The slave trade has even been justified as a great education. "Think of the effect, the result of a slave What an eduvoyage on a youngster starting in his teens. cation was such a voyage for the farmer lad. What an enlargement of experience for a country boy. If he returned to the farm his whole outlook on life would be changed. He went

Cuban and

is

dubious.

it

Brazilian slave trade,

it

.

.

.

out a boy; he returned a man." 101

The

were among the leading humanitarians of John Gary, advocate of the slave trade, was conspicuous for his integrity and humanity and was the founder of a slave traders

their age.

102 The "Incorporation of the Poor." Bristol slaver "Southwell" was named after a Bristol parliamen-

society

known

as the

whose monument depicts him as true to king and country and steady to what he thought right. 103 Bryan Blundell of Liverpool, one of Liverpool's most prosperous merchants, engaged in both the slave and West Indian trades, was for many most active supporter years trustee, treasurer, chief patron and of a.charity school, the Blue Coat Hospital, founded in xyo^ 104

tarian,

To

this charity another Liverpool slave trader, Foster Cunliffe, contributed largely. He was a pioneer in the slave trade. He and his two sons are listed as members of the Liverpool Committee

of Merchants trading to Africa in 1752. Together they had four ships capable of holding 1,120 slaves, the profits from which were sufficient to stock twelve vessels on the homeward

journey with sugar and rum. in St. Peter's

Church

An

describes

inscription to Foster Cunliffe thus: "a Christian devout

him

and exemplary

in the exercise of every private and publick friend to duty, mercy, patron to distress, an enemy only to vice and sloth, he lived esteemed by all who knew him and died .

lamented by the wise and good.

.

.

."

105

.

.

Thomas Leyland, one

of the largest slave traders of the same port, had, as mayor, no mercy for the engrosser, the forestaller, the regrater, and was a terror to evil doers. 106

the

first

Arthur

The Heywoods were

slave traders

and

to import the slave-grown cotton of the United States. Heywood was treasurer of the Manchester

Academy

48


were educated. One son, Benjamin, was elected of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, and was admitted to the Billiard Club, the most recherche club Manchester has ever possessed, which admitted

where

his sons

member

only the very best men as regards manners, position and attainments. To be admitted to the charmed circle of the Forty meant unimpeachable recognition as a gentleman. Later Benjamin

Hey wood

bitions of

organized the

works of

art

first

of the Manchester exhi-

and industry. 107

England. The Royal headed by royalty, included two aldermen, three dukes, eight earls, seven lords, one countess, and twenty-seven knights. 108 The signatures of

These slave traders held high office Adventurers trading to Africa in 1667,

in

a

list

the mayors of Liverpool and Bristol appear on a petition of the The Bristol Committee set up in 1789 to oppose abolition of the slave trade included five aldermen,

slave traders in I739. 109

one an ex-captain of a

slaver.

110

Many

a slave trader held Liver-

111

The slave traders were pool's highest municipal dignity. firmly established in both houses of Parliament. Ellis Cunliffe 112 The represented Liverpool in Parliament from 1755 to I767LiverTarleton family, prominent in the slave trade, voiced 113 The House of pool's opposition to abolition in Parliament.

Lords, traditionally conservative, was confirmed in its instinctive opposition to abolition by the presence of many ennobled slave traders. It

gave sympathetic hearing to the Earl of Westmor-

land's statement that

Upper House Jacobinism.

Chamber.

115

110

many

of them

owed

their seats in the

to the slave trade, 114 and that abolition was wonder Wilberforce feared the Upper

No

Not without

confidence did the Assembly of

Jamaica state categorically in 1792 that "the safety of the West Indies not only depends on the slave trade not being abolished, but on a speedy declaration of the House of Lords that they will not suffer the trade to be abolished." 117

Some

protests

were voiced by

a

few eighteenth century

Defoe in his "Reformation of Manprelates. ners," condemned the slave trade. The poet Thomson, in his intellectuals

and

"Summer," drew

a lurid picture of the shark following in the

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SLAVE TRADE wake of

49

Cowper, after some hesitation, wrote "The Task." Blake wrote his beautiful Black Boy." Southey composed some

the slave ship.

memorable poem on the

lines in

his

"Little

poignant verses

on the

"Sailor

who had

served in the Slave

much

Trade." But

of this eighteenth century literature, as Professor Sypher has shown in an exhaustive analysis, 118 concentrated on the "noble Negro," the prince unjustly made captive, superior even in

bondage to

his captors.

This

senti-

mentality, typical of the eighteenth century in general, more often than not carried the vicious implication that the slavery

of the ignoble

Negro was

justified.

Boswell on the other hand

was to shut a dubbed Wilberforce and on mankind, mercy

stated emphatically that to abolish the slave trade

the gates of

"dwarf with big resounding name." 119

Two

eighteenth century merchants, Bentley and Roscoe, opthe slave trade before 1783; they were more than merposed chants, they were Liverpool merchants. eighteenth cenand the economists condemned inefficiency expensiveness tury

Two

Dean Tucker and Adam Smith,

of slave labor

tocsin, the trumpeter of the

unheeded.

new

age.

The

the warning

discordant notes went

The

eighteenth century endorsed the plea of Temple Luttrell: "Some gentlemen may, indeed, object to the slave trade as inhuman and impious; let us consider that if our colonies are to be maintained and cultivated, which can only be done by African negroes, it is surely better to supply our-

selves

with those labourers in British bottoms, than purchase

them through the medium of French, Dutch, or Danish factors." 120

On

one occasion a Mauritius gentleman, eager to convince the abolitionist Bnxton that "the blacks were the happiest his statepeople in the w orld," appealed to his wife to confirm ment from her own impressions of the slaves she had seen. r

"Well, yes," replied the good spouse, "they were very happy, I'm sure, only I used to think it so odd to see the black cooks chained to the fireplace." 121 Only a few Englishmen before 1783, like the good spouse, had any doubts about the morality of the slave trade. Those who had realized that objections, as

Postlethwayt put

it,

would be of

little

weight with statesmen


5O

who saw

the great national emoluments which accrued from the slave trade. "We shall take things as they are, and reason from them in their present state, and not from that wherein we

could hope them to be. ...

We cannot think of giving up the

slave-trade, notwithstanding good wishes that it could be done." Later, perhaps, some noble and benevolent Christian

my

might think of changing the system, "which, as things are 122 circumstanced, may not be so easily brought about." Before the American Revolution English public opinion in general accepted the view of the slave trader: "Tho' to traffic spirit

now

in

human

creatures,

may

at first sight

appear barbarous, in-

human, and unnatural; yet the traders herein have

own

as

much

to

excuse, as can be said for some other branches of trade, namely, the advantage of it. ... In a word, from this trade proceed benefits, far outweighing all, either real

plead in their

or pretended mischiefs and inconveniencies." 123

3

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE BRITISH

A.

THE TRIANGULAR TRADE

ADAM SMITH, the discovery of America and the to India are "the two greatest and most important route Cape events recorded in the history of mankind." The importance of the discovery of America lay not in the precious metals it

ACCORDING TO

provided but in the new and inexhaustible market it afforded for European commodities. One of its principal effects was to "raise the mercantile system to a degree of splendour and glory which it could never otherwise have attained to." 1 It gave rise to an enormous increase in world trade. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the centuries of trade, as the nineteenth century was the century of production. For Britain that

was primarily the triangular trade. In 1718 William Wood was "the spring and parent whence the others flow." 2 A few years later Postlethwayt described the slave trade as "the first principle and foundation of all the rest, the mainspring of the machine which sets every wheel in

trade

said that the slave trade

motion." 3 In

this

triangular

trade

England

France

and Colonial

supplied the exports and the ships; Africa merchandise; the plantations the colonial raw ma-

America equally the

human The

slave ship sailed from the home country with a of manufactured goods. These were exchanged at a profit cargo

terials.


52

on the coast of Africa for Negroes, who were traded on the in exchange for a cargo of colonial plantations, at another profit, be back to to taken the home country. As the volume produce

of trade increased, the triangular trade was supplemented, but never supplanted, by a direct trade between home country and the

West

Indies,

exchanging home manufactures directly for

colonial produce.

The

triangular trade thereby gave a triple stimulus to British

industry.

The Negroes were purchased with

tures; transported to the plantations,

British

manufac-

they produced sugar, cot-

ton, indigo, molasses and other tropical products, the processin England; while the ing of which created new industries maintenance of the Negroes and their owners on the planta-

New

market for British industry, England agriculture and the Newfoundland fisheries. By 1750 there was hardly a trading or a manufacturing town in England which

tions provided another

was not

some way connected with the

in

4

triangular or direct

The

profits obtained provided one of the main streams of that accumulation of capital in England which finan-

colonial trade.

ced the Industrial Revolution.

The West

Indian islands became the hub of the British

Em-

of immense importance to the grandeur and prosperity of pire, England. It was the Negro slaves who made these sugar colonies the most precious colonies ever recorded in the whole annals of imperialism. To Postlethwayt they were "the fundamental

prop and support" of the colonies, "valuable people" whose labor supplied Britain with all plantation produce. The British Empire was "a magnificent superstructure of American

commerce and

naval

5 power on an African foundation."

Sir Josiah Child estimated that every Englishman in the West Indies, "with the ten blacks that work with him, accounting

what they

men

in

eat,

use and wear, 6

England."

By

would make employment for four

Davenant's computation one person in

the islands, white or Negro, was as profitable as seven in England. 7 Another writer considered that every family in the West Indies gave

employment

to five

seamen and many more

arti-

manufacturers and tradesmen, and that every white person in the islands brought in ten pounds annually clear profit ficers,

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE

53

twenty times as much as a similar person in the 8 country. William Wood reckoned that a profit of seven a country; shillings per head per annum was sufficient to enrich to England,

home

each white 9

pounds.

man

Sir

in the colonies

brought a profit of over seven further every person em-

Dalby Thomas went

ployed on the sugar plantations was 130 times more valuable to England than one at home. 10 Professor Pitman has estimated 1775 British West Indian plantations represented a valuation of fifty millions sterling, 11 and the sugar planters themselves put the figure at seventy millions in I788. 12 In 1798

that in

Pitt assessed the annual

income from West Indian plantations

four million pounds as compared with one million from the 13 As Adam Smith wrote: "The profits of a rest of the world. at

sugar plantation in any of our West Indian colonies are generis ally much greater than those of any other cultivation that known either in Europe or America." 14

According to Davenant,

Britain's total trade at the

seventeenth century brought in a profit of

end of the

2,000,000.

The

plantation trade accounted for 600,000; re-export of plantation goods 120,000; European, African and Levant trade 600,000; East India trade 500,000; re-export of East India goods i8o,ooo.

15

Whitworth, in 1776, made a complete compilafrom official tion, records, of the import and export trade of Great Britain for the years 1697-1773. His book is invaluable Sir Charles

for an appreciation of the relative importance of the Caribbean and mainland colonies in the British Empire of the eighteenth century. For the year 1697 the West Indian colonies supplied nine per cent of British imports, the mainland colonies eight

per cent; four per cent of British exports went to the West Indies, slightly under four per cent to the mainland; the West Indies accounted for seven per cent of Britain's total trade, the

mainland for six per cent. In 1773 the West Indies still maintained their lead, though as an export market they had become inferior to the mainland colonies with their larger white populayear nearly one-quarter of British imports came Caribbean areas, one-eighth from the entire mainland; the Caribbean consumed somewhat over eight per cent of Brit-

tion. In that

from

all

54


ish exports, the

mainland sixteen per cent; fifteen per cent of was with the West Indies, fourteen per cent

Britain's total trade

with the mainland. Taking the totals for the years 1714-1773, and including in those totals trade with new acquisitions, foreign colonies temporarily occupied by British forces during the war, or foreign colonies in general, we get the following picture:

One-fifth of British imports came from the Caribbean, oneninth from the mainland; six per cent of British exports went to the Caribbean, nine per cent to the mainland; twelve per cent

of Britain's total foreign commerce was accounted for by the Caribbean, ten per cent by the mainland. During these same years one-half per cent of British imports came from Africa, two per cent of British exports went to Africa, while African trade represented nearly one and a half per cent of total British trade. Leaving out of account, therefore, the plantation colonies on the mainland, Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, Georgia, the triangular and West Indian trades represented

nearly one-seventh of total British trade during the years 1714-1773. The amazing value of these West Indian colonies can more graphically be presented by comparing individual West Indian islands with individual mainland colonies. In 1697 British im-

from Barbados were five times the combined imports from the bread colonies; the exports to Barbados were slightly Little Barbados, with its 166 square miles, was worth larger. more to British capitalism than New England, New York and Pennsylvania combined. In 1773 British imports from Jamaica were more than five times the combined imports from the bread colonies; British exports to Jamaica were nearly oneports

New

third larger than those to England and only slightly less than those to York and Pennsylvania combined. For the years 1714-1773 British imports from Montserrat were three

New

times the imports from Pennsylvania, imports from Nevis were almost double those from York, imports from

New Antigua were over three times those from New England. Imports from Barbados were more than twice as large as those from the bread colonies, imports from Jamaica nearly six times as large. For the same years Jamaica as an export market was as valuable

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE New

as

England; Barbados and Antigua combined meant

55 as

New

much

to British exporters as York; Montserrat and Nevis combined were a better market than Pennsylvania. British exless ports to Africa during these years were only one-tenth

New England, British imports from Africa onemore than those from New York and more than double quarter those from Pennsylvania. 16 Mercantilists were enthusiastic. The triangular trade, and the

than those to

associated trade with the sugar islands, because of the navigation they encouraged, were more valuable to England than her tin or coal. 17 These were ideal colonies. But for them would have no gold or silver, except what she received from illicit commerce with the Spanish colonies, and an unfav-

mines of Britain

orable balance of trade. 18 Their tropical products, unlike those of the northern part of the mainland, did not compete with those of the home country. They showed little sign of that industrial development which was the constant fear where the mainland was concerned. Their large black population was an 19 effective guarantee against It all aspirations to independence. combined to spell one word, sugar. "The pleasure, glory and

grandeur of England," wrote Sir Dalby Thomas, "has been advanced more by sugar than by any other commodity, wool not excepted." 20

There was one

qualification

monopoly. The economic

philosophy of the age had no room for the open door, and colonial trade was a rigid monopoly of the home country. The mercantilists

were adamant on

this point.

"Colonies," wrote

Davenant, "are a strength to their mother kingdom, while they are under good discipline, while they are strictly made to observe the fundamental laws of their original country, and while

they are kept dependent on it. But otherwise, they are worse than members lopped from the body politic, being indeed like offensive arms wrested from a nation to be turned against it as occasion shall serve." 21

The colonies, in return for their prosthe mother country, in Postlethwayt's view, gratiperity, tude and an indispensable duty "to be immediately dependent owed

on

their original parent

thereunto." 22

and to make their

interest subservient


56 It

The

was on

these ideas that the mercantile system was erected. were obliged to send their valuable products to and use English ships. They could buy nothing

colonies

England only

but British unless the foreign commodities were

And

first

taken to

England. they were to work for the greater glory of their parent, they were reduced to a state of permanent vassalage and confined solely to the exploitation since, as dutiful children,

of their agricultural resources. Not a nail, not a horseshoe, said Chatham, could be manufactured, nor hats, nor iron, nor refined sugar. In return for this, England made one concession

monopoly of the home

the colonial products were given a

market.

The keystone

of this mercantilist arch was the Navigation 23 The Laws, "English measures designed for English ends." Navigation Laws were aimed at the Dutch, "the foster fathers," as

Andrews

calls

24 them, of the early British colonies,

who

sup-

plied credit, delivered goods, purchased colonial produce and transported it to Europe, all at more attractive rates than the

open market. But the laws were aimed 25 and Scotland's attempt to set up also at the Scotch and Irish an independent African Company 26 aroused great fears in England and was largely responsible for the Act of Union in 1707.

British could offer in

The trade.

sugar islands protested against this monopoly of their Those who, in 1 840, were loudest in their opposition to

most fervent advocates of free governor of Barbados begged "leave to be he is come to where it pinches. plain with His Majesty, for whoever he be that Free trade is the life of all colonies advised His Majesty to restrain and tie up his colonies is more a merchant than a good subject." 27 His successor repeated the warning: "Ye must make their port a free port for all people to trade with them that will come. The ordinary way thats taken free trade, were, in 1660, the

trade. In 1666 the

.

.

for

new

plantations

I

.

humbly conceive

.

.

.

is

a

little

erroneous.

Lords the Act for Trade and Navigation in England will certainly in tyme bee the ruine of all his Maties forreigne 28 The Lords of Trade decided to "give him a plantations." cheque for upholding this maxim of free trade," and censured him severely for "these dangerous principles which he enter-

My

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE tains

57

contrary to the settled laws of the kingdom and the ap29

parent advantage of it." Such subversive ideas could not possibly be tolerated in an age which heard demands that the Navigation Laws be stretched to confine the provision for "English built" ships to ships built of English timber and using British made canvas, and which passed legislation that the dead be buried in English wool and servants and slaves on the plantations be made to wear Engwool, to encourage England's foremost industry. Negroes, the most important export of Africa, and sugar, the most im-

all

lish

portant export of the West Indies, were the principal commodities enumerated by the Navigation Laws. But the West Indian sugar planters never accepted this limitation on their trade. Ultimately in 1739

they were granted a modification of

the Navigation Laws, but in so limited a form and only to such poor foreign markets in Europe south of Cape Finisterre

advantages were nugatory. But even this concession, shorn badly though it was, aroused the wrath of English merchants. It would, said a Liverpool petition before the measure became a law, "be highly prejudicial in many instances to the

that

its

and manufactures, to the trade and navigation of Great and of this port in particular." 30 One hundred the later same conflict was to be fought out, more bitterly, years between monopoly and free trade, mercantilism and laissez faire. The antagonists were the same, British traders and industrialists on the one hand and West Indian sugar planters on now all for British the other. But capitalism, monopoly, was Indian West the then all for free trade; planters, on the other trade sentiments and clung hand, forgot all their noble free tenaciously to the principle of monopoly which they had form-

interest

Britain in general

erly

condemned,

B.

as

making them "the merchants'

slaves." 81

SHIPPING AND SHIPBUILDING

This external trade naturally drew in its wake a tremendous development of shipping and shipbuilding. Not the least of the advantages of the triangular trade was its contribution to the wooden walls of England. There was less distinction between a


58

merchant ship and a man-of-war in those days than there is today. The "long voyage" was an admirable nursery for the seamen, the merchantmen invaluable aides to the navy in time of war; and advocates of the slave trade argued that its abolition would annihilate the marine by cutting off a great source of seamen. 32 As one Liverpool slave trader wrote: "It is a matter of

two much importance

to this

kingdom when ever it is kingdom is abolished with

abolished the naval importance of this it, that moment our flagg will

triumgradually cease to ride

phant on the

seas." 33

1678 the Commissioners of Customs reported that the the great nurseries of the shipping plantation trade was one of one of the greatest branches of its of and and seamen England In

trade.

34

Here again the sugar

colonies.

to

More

colonies outdistanced the bread

English ships sailed to the sugar colonies

the mainland colonies combined. In

all

than

1690 the sugar

employed 114 ships, of 13,600 tons and 1,203 seamen; the mainland colonies in ships, of 14,320 tons and 1,271 seamen. 35 Between 1710 and 1714, 122,000 tons of British shipping colonies

West Indies, 112,000 tons to the mainland. 36 The Indian trade in 1709 employed one-tenth of British ship-

sailed to the

West

37 ping engaged in foreign trade. Between 1709 and 1787 British 38

shipping engaged in foreign trade quadrupled; ships clearing for Africa multiplied twelve times and the tonnage eleven times. 89

Shipbuilding in England received a direct stimulus from the triangular trade. Vessels of a particular type were constructed for the slave trade, combining capacity with speed in an effort to reduce mortality. Many shipwrights in Liverpool were themselves slave traders.

The

outstanding firm was Baker and

Daw-

largest exporters of slaves to the West Indies, and engaged, after 1783, in the supplying of slaves to the Spanish colonies. John Gorell was one of the Liverpool mem-

son,

one of the

of Merchants trading to Africa. So was one of Liverpool's most successful shipbuilders, but apparently he eschewed the slave trade. In a port whose prosperity was intimately connected with the slave trade, William Rathbone was a curiosity in his refusal to supply timber bers of the

John

Okill,

Company

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE for the construction of vessels to be trade,

40

in

which

59

employed in the slave were engaged. 41

half of Liverpool's sailors

The shipping industry was divided, as industry in general, on the question of the organization of the slave trade. Some sections favored the Royal African Company, others the free traders. 42 But on the of abolition the industry presented question a united front, abolition that would strike at the very arguing roots of Britain's naval and imperial supremacy. The first reaction of Liverpool to the act of 1788 regulating the capacity

of slavers was that

it left 22 masters of slave mates and ships, 47 seamen with families and tradesmen their the 350 unemployed, 43 dependent more indirectly on the trade with Africa. In addition to the seamen, there were the ancillary trades. and and artisans tradesmen boat-builders; Carpenters, painters connected with repairs, equipment and lading; commissions, wages, dock duties, insurances all depended partly on the ships trading to Africa. To supply the ships, there were in 1774 44 fifteen roperies in There were few people in the Liverpool. it was who would not be affected, directly or town, claimed,

indirectly,

by

abolition. 45

The

sugar islands made yet another contribution to the growth of shipping. The peculiar economy developed in the West Indies concentrated on export crops while food was iman ported. Most important of all the food supplies was fish, article dear to the heart of every mercantilist, because it provided employment for ships and training for seamen. Laws were passed in England to encourage the consumption of fish.

Friday and Saturday were set apart as fish days. Fish was an important item of the diet of the slaves on the plantations, and the English herring trade found tions.

46

The Newfoundland

chief market in the sugar plantafishery depended to a considerable

its

extent on the annual export of dried fish to the West Indies, the refuse or "poor John" fish, "fit for no other consumption." 47 West Indian tradition was thereby fostered. Imported salted

A

cod

is

still

well-to-do

today a normal and favorite dish in Indian families; whether it is still

West

other consumption"

is

not known.

all

but the

"fit

for no


60

The

increase in shipping subjected the eighteenth century

docks of England to intolerable

strain.

The number

of ships

entering the port of London trebled between 1705 and 1795, the tonnage quadrupled, exclusive of the smaller vessels engaged in the coasting trade.

The warehouses on

the quays

were

in-

adequate for the imports. The colliers could not be discharged and the price of coals rose enormously. Sugar was piled six or eight hogsheads high on the quay, increasing the danger of fire and encouraging thefts. A great machine of organized crime was developed, involving some ten thousand people. The total annual depredations at the docks were estimated at half a million pounds, half this

sum from

vessels

from the Caribbean.

The West

Indian merchants set themselves to grapple with the problem. They organized a special force of constables to cope with the thefts, and set up a general register of laborers

discharging West Indian ships. They lobbied in Parliament and of the eventually secured an act authorizing the construction

West

India Docks. For twenty-one years they were given a monopoly of loading and unloading vessels engaged in the

Indian trade. The first stone was laid in 1800, and the ceremony was followed by an elegant entertainment for the notables present, at which one toast was appropriately drunk to the prosperity of the West Indian colonies. The docks were publicly opened in 1802, the first ship being named after the Prime Minister, and the second laden with six hundred tons of

West

48

sugar.

C.

GROWTH OF THE GREAT BRITISH SEA PORT TOWNS The development

of the triangular trade and of shipping and growth of the great seaport towns.

shipbuilding led to the

Liverpool and Glasgow occupied, as seaports and trading centers, the position in the age of trade that Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield occupied later in the age of industry.

Bristol,

was

was scarcely a shopkeeper in not a venture on board some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Even the parsons talked of nothing but trade, and it was satirically alleged that Bristol freights It

Bristol

said in 1685 that there

who had


6l

were owned not by merchants but by mechanics.49 Customs duties rose from 10,000 in 1634 to 334,000 in 1785. Wharfage dues, payable on every vessel above sixty tons, doubled between 50 1 745 and I775. It was the slave and sugar trades which made Bristol the second city of England for the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century. "There is not," wrote a local annalist, "a brick in the city

but what

is

cemented with the blood of

a slave.

Sumptuous mansions, luxurious living, liveried menials, were the produce of the wealth made from the sufferings and groans of the slaves bought and sold

by

the Bristol merchants. ... In

their childlike simplicity they could not feel the iniquity of the 51 but merchandise, analysis of they could feel it lucrative." a committee set up in 1789 to oppose the movement for aboli-

An

shows that among the members elected were nine merchants at some time mayors of Bristol, five who were sheriffs, seven had been or were to be Masters of the 52 Society of Merchant Venturers. When Bristol was outstripped in the slave trade by Liverpool, it turned its attention from the triangular trade to the direct sugar trade. Fewer Bristol ships sailed to Africa, more went direct to the Caribbean. In 1700 the port had forty-six 53 In 1787 there were thirty ships in the West Indian trade.

tion of the slave trade

Bristol vessels

in the slave trade,

engaged

seventy-two in the

West

Indian trade; the former averaged 140 tons each, the 54 In 1788 Bristol had as many ships in the trade to the latter 240.

Leeward

and almost

Islands,

in the trade to Africa.

55

as

many

in the trade to Jamaica, as

Nearly one-third of the tonnage which

more than one-third of that which sailed from, the port was engaged in the trade with the sugar colonies; 56 and it was the amiable custom in Bristol to celebrate the arrival of the first sugar ship each year by a gift of wine at the expense of the fortunate owner. 57 The West Indian trade was worth to Bris-

entered,

tol

twice

As

late as

and tol

it

as

much

as all

her other overseas commerce combined.

1830 five-eighths of its trade was with the West Indies, was said in 1833 t ât without the West Indian trade Bris-

would be

Bristol

a fishing port. 68

had

a

West

Indian Society of

its

own. The

Town

62


Council distributed municipal funds for the relief of distress caused by fire in the sugar islands. It was customary for younger sons and junior members of West Indian firms to

spend some years on the plantations before entering business at home. Bristol members of Parliament in the eighteenth century

were frequently

one way or another, with the sugar plantations, and so important did the islands become to Bristol that for the first half of the nineteenth century Bristol associated, in

was always represented

in Parliament

Baillie, a Protheroe, or a Miles.

by

James Evan

a

West

Baillie

Indian

a

exhorted his

fellow citizens not to lay the axe at the root of their own pros59 perity by supporting the abolition of slavery in the islands.

His

own

prosperity was also at stake.

The compensation

paid

to the family for their ownership of numerous slaves in Trinidad and British Guiana exceeded 62,ooo. 60 Bristol presented a de-

termined opposition to the equalization of the sugar duties which gave the coup de grace to the West Indian monopoly. Thereafter Bristol's trade with the West Indies declined rapidly.

In 1847 forty per cent of the port's tonnage was bound for the West Indies, and ships returning from the islands represented a mere eleven per cent. In 1871 no ship left Bristol for Jamaica, and the inward tonnage from the islands constituted less than two per cent of the arrivals. Bristol's trade with the islands did

not revive until the end of the nineteenth century with the advent of the banana in the world market. 61

What the West Indian trade did for Bristol the slave trade did for Liverpool. In 1565 Liverpool had 138 householders, seven streets only were inhabited, the merchant marine port's ships of 223 tons. Until the end of the seventeenth century the only local event of importance was the siege of the town during the English Civil War. 62 In collecting ship money Strafford assessed Liverpool at fifteen

amounted to twelve

63 The shipping entering pounds; Bristol paid two thousand. Liverpool increased four and a half times between 1709 and 1771; the outward tonnage six and a half times. The number

of ships

owned by

the port multiplied four times during the

same period, the tonnage and

sailors

over

six times. 64

Customs


63

receipts soared from an average of 51,000 for the years 1750 to 1757 to 648,000 in 1 785.^ Dock duties increased two and a half times

between 1752 and 177 1. 66 The population rose from

5,000 in 1700 to 34,000 in 1773. By 1770 Liverpool had become too famous a town in the trading world for Arthur Young to pass

it

by on

The

his travels

over England. 67

abolitionist Clarkson

argued that the

rise

of Liverpool

was due

to a variety of causes, among which were the salt trade, the prodigious increase of the population of Lancashire, and the 68 rapid and great extension of the manufactures of Manchester.

This

is

a

horse. It

particularly flagrant case of putting the cart before the was only the capital accumulation of Liverpool which

called the population of Lancashire into existence and stimulated the manufactures of Manchester. That capital accumulation came from the slave trade, whose importance was appre-

more by contemporaries than by later historians. It was a common saying that several of the principal streets of Liverpool had been marked out by the chains, and the walls ciated

the blood, of the African slaves,69 nicknamed "Negro Row." 70 The red brick

of the houses cemented

by

and one street was Customs House was blazoned with Negro heads. 71 The story is told of an actor in the town, who, hissed by the audience for appearing before them, not for the first time, in a drunken condition, steadied himself and declared with offended majesty: "I

have not come here to be insulted by a set of wretches, every whose infernal town is cemented with an African's

brick in

blood." 72 It was estimated in J79O that the 138 ships which sailed from Liverpool for Africa represented a capital of over a million pounds. Liverpool's own probable loss from the abolition of the

slave trade

was then computed

at

over seven and a half million

73

Abolition, it was said, would ruin the town. It would destroy the foundation of its commerce and the first cause of the national industry and wealth. "What vain pretence of

pounds.

liberty," it was asked in Liverpool, "can infatuate people to run into so much licentiousness as to assert a trade is unlawful which

custom immemorial, and various Acts of Parliament, have 74 fied and given a sanction to?"

rati-

64


This dependence on the slave trade has proved very awkward

A

to sensitive and patriotic historians. generation, argued a Bristol historian in 1939, which has seen the spoilation of

dismemberment of China and the rape of 75 Czechoslovakia, cannot afford to condemn the slave trade. In the opinion of a Liverpool town clerk, Liverpool has borne more than its share of the stigma attaching to the slave trade. Ethiopia, the brutal

The

indomitable perseverance and energy of its people would have ensured an equal prosperity in other directions, as effec-

tively if not as quickly, had the slave trade not existed, and the ultimate success of the port would perhaps have been re-

though not prejudiced or impaired, without the slave According to yet another Liverpool writer, there was nothing derogatory in the fact that their ancestors had dealt in "niggers," and the horrors of the slave trade were exceeded by the horrors of the Liverpool drink traffic. But, after all, "it was the capital made in the African slave trade that built some of our docks. It was the price of human flesh and blood that gave

tarded,

trade. 76

Some of those who made their fortunes out of the had soft hearts under their waistcoats for the poor of Liverpool, while the profits from slave trading represented "an influx of wealth which, perhaps, no consideration would induce 77 a commercial community to relinquish." us a start."

slave trade

Not

until the

participate

Act of Union of 707 was Scotland allowed to That permission put Glasgow on 1

in colonial trade.

the map. Sugar and tobacco underlay the prosperity of the town in the eighteenth century. Colonial commerce stimulated

growth of new industries. As Bishop Pococke wrote in 1760, Glasgow: "the city has above all others felt the the of Union, by the West India trade which they advantages is which enjoy, very great, especially in tobacco, indigoes and

the

after a visif to

78 sugar." Sugar refining continued as an important industry in the Clyde Valley until the eclipse of the West Indian islands in

the middle of the nineteenth century.

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE THE GOODS IN THE TRIANGULAR TRADE

D. It is

65

necessary

now

to trace the industrial development in directly or indirectly by the

England which was stimulated

goods for the triangular trade and the processing of colonial produce.

The widespread

ramifications of the slave trade in English industry are illustrated by this cargo to Africa for the year 1787: cotton and linen goods, silk handkerchiefs, coarse blue and red

woolen

cloths, scarlet cloth in grain, coarse and fine hats, worsted caps, guns, powder, shot, sabers, lead bars, iron bars, pewter basons, copper kettles and pans, iron pots, hardware of various kinds, earthen and glass ware, hair and gilt leather trunks, beads of various kinds, silver and gold rings and ornaments, paper, coarse and fine checks, linen ruffled shirts and 79 caps, British and foreign spirits and tobacco. This sundry assortment was typical of the slave trader's

cargo. Finery for Africans, household utensils, cloths of all kinds, iron and other metals, together with guns, handcuffs and fetters: the production of these stimulated capitalism, pro-

vided employment for British labor, and brought great profits to England. i.

Wool

Until the tremendous development of the cotton industry the Industrial Revolution, wool was the spoiled child of English manufactures. It figured largely in all considerations afin

fecting the slave trade in the century after 1680.

The cargo

of

was incomplete without some woolen manufactures the says, serges, perpetuanos, arrangoes and bays. Sometimes cloth was called after the locality where it was first manufaca slave ship

tured.

Bridwaters represented Bridgewater's interest in the Welsh Plaines, a woolen cloth of the simplest

colonial market;

weave, was manufactured in western England and Wales. A parliamentary committee of 1695 voiced the public sentiment that the trade to Africa was an encouragement to the

woolen manufacture. 80

Among the arguments put forward to prove the importance of the slave trade, the exports of wool

66


A

that trade encouraged were always given first place. pamphlet of 1680, illustrating the public utility and advantages of the African trade, begins with "the exportation of our native

which

woollen and other manufactures in great abundance, most of which were imported formerly out of Holland whereby the wooll of this nation is much more consumed and spent then .

.

.

81 formerly; and many thousand of the poor people imployed." Similarly, the Royal African Company stated in a petition in 1696 that the slave trade should be supported by England, because of the exports it encouraged of woolen and other English

manufactures. 82

The woolen manufacturers

kingdom took a prominent part in the long and bitter controversy waged between the Royal African Company and the separate traders. Those from whom the company made its purchases argued that the interof the

the trade, and that lopers caused disturbances and dislocation of the trade declined when the company's monopoly was modi-

In 1694 the clothiers of Witney petitioned Parliament in favor of the company's monopoly. The cloth workers of fied.

Shrewsbury followed suit in 1696, and the weavers of Kidderminster twice in the same year. In 1709 the weavers of Exeter and the woolen tradesmen of London, and in 1713 several tradesmen interested in the woolen manufacture, also took the 83

company's side. But the weight of the woolen interests was on the whole thrown on the side of the free traders. The company's monopoly enabled it to "screw up the tradesmen to a limited quantity and price, length, breadth and weight." 84 Monopoly meant one buyer and one seller only. A searcher in the custom house testified that when the trade was open there was a greater exportation of wool. According to the testimony of two London merchants in 1693, t 'ie monopoly had reduced the exports of

wool by nearly one-third. Suffolk exported 25,000 woolen two years after the incorporation of the comthe number declined to 500. 85 In 1690 the clothiers of Sufpany, cloths a year;

folk and Essex and the manufacturers of Exeter petitioned against the company's monopoly. Exeter petitioned again in 1694, 1696, 1709, 1710 and 1711 in favor of free trade. The


67

woolen merchants of the kingdom complained in 1694 that rehad greatly lessened their sales. Similar petitions were presented against the monopoly by the woolen traders of London and the woolen merchants of Plymouth in 1710, the woolen dealers of Totnes and Ashburton, the woolen manufacturers of Kidderminster, the Merchant Adventurers of Minehead engaged in the woolen manufacture in 17 ii. 86 Other petitions to Parliament emphasized the importance of the colonial market for the woolen industry. In 1690 the strictions

planters of Jamaica protested against the company's monopoly as a discouragement to trade, especially the woolen trade.

A

from Manchester

in 1704 revealed that English petition was traded to Holland, Hamburg and the East for linen

and

wool

yarn which, when manufactured, were sent to the plantaThe merchants and traders of Liverpool in 1709, the mer-

flax,

tions.

chants and inhabitants of Liverpool in 1715, contended that the company's monopoly was detrimental to the woolen industry. Petitions

from the

industrial

North

in 1735 disclosed that

Wake-

field, Halifax, Burnley, Colne and Kendal were all interested in the manufacture of woolen goods for Africa and the West

Indies. 87

That woolen goods should markets tilist

is

figure so prominently in tropical to be attributed to the deliberate policy of mercan-

England.

It

was argued

in 1732,

on behalf of the mainland

colonies, that Pennsylvania alone consumed more woolen exports from England than all the sugar islands combined, and

New

York more than any sugar Woolen goods were more suited for

island

88

except Jamaica. these colder climates, and

the Barbadian planters preferred light calicoes

which could be

washed. 89 But wool was England's staple, and climatic considerations were too great a refinement for the mercantilist mind. Any one familiar with British West Indian society easily

today will appreciate the strength of the tradition thereby fostered. Woolen undergarments are still common in the islands today, though more among the older generation, and suits of blue serge are still a sign of the well-dressed man. Like the

Englishman and unlike the North American in the colonies, the Caribbean colored middle class today still apes the fashions of


68 the

home country

which

in

its

preference for the heavier materials

are so ridiculous and uncomfortable in a tropical en-

vironment.

But cotton

later

did in domestic.

it superseded wool in colonial markets as a total export of four million pounds of

Of

woolen manufactures in 1772, less than three per cent went to 90 The the West Indies and less than four per cent to Africa. best customers were Europe and America. In 1783 the woolen imitation of the techindustry was slowly beginning its belated had revolutionized the cotton industry. which nological changes In its progress after 1783 the triangular trade and West Indian market played no appreciable part. 2.

Cotton Manufacture

What

the building of ships for the transport of slaves did for eighteenth century Liverpool, the manufacture of cotton goods for the purchase of slaves did for eighteenth century Man-

The first stimulus to the growth of Cottonopolis came from the African and West Indian markets. The growth of Manchester was intimately associated with the growth of Liverpool, its outlet to the sea and the world market. The capital accumulated by Liverpool from the slave

chester.

trade poured into the hinterland to fertilize the energies of Manchester; Manchester goods for Africa were taken to the coast in the Liverpool slave vessels. Lancashire's foreign market meant chiefly the West Indian plantations and Africa. The ex-

port trade was

14,000 in 1739; in 1759 it had increased nearly it was to 1770 one-third of this 303,000.

eight times; in 1779

Up

export went to the slave coast, one-half to the American and West Indian colonies.91 It was this tremendous on

dependence

the triangular trade that

made Manchester.

Light woolen goods were popular on the slave coast: so were silks, provided they were gaudy and had large flowers. But the most popular of all materials was cotton goods, as the African was already accustomed to coarse blue .and white cotton cloths of his own manufacture, and from the beginning the striped loincloths called "annabasses" were a regular feature of every slave trader's cargo. Indian textiles, banned in England,


69

soon established a monopoly of the African market. Brawls, tapsells, niccanees, cuttanees, buckshaws, nillias, salempores these Indian cloths were highly prized, and yet another powerful vested interest

was drawn

into the orbit of the slave trade,

Manchester tried to compete with the East India Company; bafts, for example, were cheap cotton fabrics from the East later copied in England for the African market. But the backwardness of the English dyeing process made it impossible for Manchester to get the fast red, green and yellow colors popular on the coast. Manchester proved unable to imitate the colors of these Indian cottons, and there is evidence to show that the French cotton manufacturers of Normandy were equally unsuccessful in learning the secrets of the East. Manchester was more fortunate in its trade in cotton and

though figures for the first half of the eighteenth The European and colonial wars of are unreliable. century and the 1739-1748 reorganization which the African Company linen checks,

was undergoing up to Africa, and

to 1750 caused a slump in the cotton trade it revived after 1750 Indian exports were

when

inadequate to satisfy the demand. English manufacturers made full use of this opportunity to push their own goods. In 1752 the export of cotton-linen checks alone from England was 57,000; in 1763, at the

end of the Seven Years' War,

it

stood at

the exceptionally high figure of 302,000, but after 1767 remained between 100,000 and 200,000, when Indian competition again proved formidable.

Available

statistics

make comparison between

the value of

English cotton checks and Indian cotton pieces exported to Africa impossible, as the former are given by value and the

by quantity. But the growth of Indian and English cotton exports to Africa will give some indication of the importance of the African market. Total cotton exports stood at 214,600 latter

they were more than double; in 1772 they were more than four times as great, but as a result of the American

in 1751; in 1763

Revolution they declined to 195,900 in 1780. The effect of the war on the slave and plantation markets is at once apparent. By 1780 checks had ceased to be an important part of the cotton was to be blamed. industry. But it was not the war alone that


70

Manchester could

satisfy the

African market only

when

Indian

cottons were scarce or dear. For the plantation market cheapness was essential, and by 1780 raw cotton was becoming, increasingly expensive as the supply lagged behind the of the new inventions. 92

demand

But according to estimates given to the Privy Council in Manchester exported annually to Africa goods worth 200,000, 180,000 of this for Negroes only; the manufacture of these goods represented an investment of 300,000 and gave 93 The employment to 180,000 men, women and children. French manufacturers, impressed with the quality and cheapness of those special goods called Guinea cloths produced in Manchester, were sending agents over to get particulars, and extending open offers to Manchester manufacturers, should Britain abolish the slave trade, to set up in Rouen where they would be given every encouragement. 94 In addition, Manches1788,

ter in

1788 furnished for the

West

300,000 annually in manufactures,

many

Indian trade more than which gave employment to

thousands. 95

Between the cotton manufacturers of Manchester and the were not the close connections that have al-

slave traders there

ready been noticed in the case of the shipbuilders of Liverpool. But two exceptional instances of such connections exist. Two well-known cotton manufacturers of Lancashire, Sir William Fazackerly and Samuel Touchet, were both members of the Company of Merchants trading to Africa. Fazackerly, a Lon-

don dealer in fustians, presented the case of the separate traders of Bristol and Liverpool against the African Company in 96 Touchet, member of a great Manchester check-making I726. house, represented Liverpool on the governing body of the company during the period 1753-1756. He was concerned in the equipping of the expedition which captured Senegal in 1758 and tried hard to get the contract for victualling the troops. patron of Paul's unsuccessful spinning machine intended to

A

revolutionize the cotton industry, accused openly of attempting to monopolize the import of raw cotton, Touchet added to his

many

interests a partnership, with his brothers, in in the West Indian trade. Touchet died,

twenty ships

about

leaving a


Jl

large fortune, and was described in his obituary notice as "the most considerable merchant and manufacturer in Manchester, remarkable for great abilities and strict integrity, and for universal benevolence and usefulness to mankind." Two modern writers have left us this description of the man: "Icarus-like

soaring too high," he emerges as "the first considerable financier that the Manchester trade produced, and certainly as one of the earliest cases of a Manchester man who was concerned at once in manufacturing and in large scale financial and ventures in the City and abroad." 97

commercial

Other cases emphasize the significance of Touchet's career. Robert Diggles, African slave trader of Liverpool, was the son of a Manchester linen draper and brother of another. In 1747 a Manchester man was in partnership with two Liverpool men in a voyage to Jamaica. A leading Manchester firm, the Hibberts, owned sugar plantations in 'Jamaica, and at one time supplied checks and imitations of Indian goods to the African

Company

for the slave trade. 98

Manchester received a double stimulus from the colonial it supplied the goods needed on the slave coast and on

trade. If

the plantations, its manufacturers depended in turn on the supply of the raw material. Manchester's interest in the islands

was twofold.

The raw

material

came

to England in the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries chiefly from two sources, the Levant and the West Indies. In the eighteenth century that Indian competition which proved too formidable for Manchester on the slave

which was threatening to swamp even the home market with Indian goods was effectively smashed, as far as England was concerned, by the prohibitive duties on Indian imports into England. The first step was thereby taken by which the motherland of cotton became in the nineteenth and twencoast and

tieth centuries the chief

market of Lancashire. In the eight-

eenth century the measure gave Manchester a monopoly of the home market, and private Indian traders began to import the raw cotton for the Lancashire factories. competitor to the

A

West

Indian islands had arisen, to be followed later

by

Brazil,


72

whose product by 1783 was recognized

as clearly superior to all

the other varieties.

But

West

in the early eighteenth century England depended on the Indian islands for between two-thirds and three-quarters

raw cotton. Cotton, nevertheless, was essentially a secondin the West Indian planter's outlook, and consideration ary however much the planters as a body looked with jealousy on of

its

its

cultivation in India or Africa or Brazil,

it

remained a second-

ary consideration. In opposing the retention of Guadeloupe in 1763, the West India interest measured their arguments in

terms of sugar, while, significantly, a contemporary pamphleteer pointed to its cotton exports to England as a reason for keeping the island." But British consumption was small and West Indian contribution welcome. In 1764 British im-

the

ports of raw cotton amounted to nearly four million pounds; the West Indies supplied one-half. In 1780 Britain imported six and a half million pounds; the West Indies sup100 two-thirds. plied In 1783, the West Indies, therefore, still dominated the cotton trade. But a new day was dawning. In the phenomenal expan-

more than

sion of an industry which was to clothe the world, a few tiny islands in the Caribbean could hardly hope to supply the neces-

sary

raw

material.

Their cotton was the long-staple, sea-island

variety, easily cleaned by hand, limited to certain areas, and therefore expensive. When the cotton gin permitted the culti-

vation of the short-staple cotton by facilitating the task of cleaning, the center of gravity shifted from the islands to the

mainland to meet the enormous demands of the

new machinery

England. In 1784 a shipment of American cotton was seized by the Liverpool customs authorities on the ground that cotton,

in

not being a bona fide product of the United States, could not legally be transported to England in an American vessel. It

was an

evil

omen

for the

West

Indians, coinciding, as

it

did, with another significant development. During the American Revolution Manchester's cotton exports to Europe almost

trebled. 101

The Revolution itself created another important market for Manchester, the independent United States, at a time when the cotton gin was just around the corner. For both


73

import and export markets, therefore, cotton was beginning world market. The sunny Caribbean sky was marred by a barely perceptible but portentous cloud, and its

to reach out to the

the gentle West Indian breeze was rising ominously. It heralded the approaching political hurricane which, to alter Edmund Burke's description of those visitations of nature com-

mon

in the

West

Indies,

humbled the sugar

planter's pride

if it

did not correct his vices. 3.

Sugar Refining.

The

processing of colonial

raw

materials gave rise to

new

in-

dustries in England, provided further employment for shipping, and contributed to a greater extension of the world market and

international trade.

eminent, and

Of

these

raw

materials sugar

was pre-

manufacture gave birth to the sugar refining The industry. refining process transformed the crude brown manufactured on the plantations into white sugar, which sugar was durable and capable of preservation, and could be easily handled and distributed all over the world. The earliest reference to sugar refining in England is an its

order of the Privy Council in 1615 prohibiting aliens from 102 erecting sugar houses or practising the art of refining sugar.

The importance

of the industry increased in proportion to

its

production on the

plantations, and as sugar became, with the of tea and coffee, one of the necessities of life instead of spread the luxury of kings. About the middle of the eighteenth century there were 1 20

England. Each refinery was estimated to provide employment for about nine men. In addition the distribution of the refined product called into existence a number of subrefineries in

sidiary trades and required ships and inland trade. 103

and wagons for the coastal

The

sugar refining industry of Bristol was one of the most important of the kingdom. It was in Bristol in 1654 that the diarist, Evelyn, saw for the first time the method of manufac104 and in the annals of Bristol's history sugar turing loaf sugar, figures frequently as a gift to distinguished visitors to the town

Richard, son of Oliver Cromwell, and King Charles

II,

in

74


return for which the king knighted four of the town's merchants. 105

In 1799, there were twenty refineries in Bristol, and the town more refining than London in proportion to size and popu-

did

lation. Bristol's

sugar was considered superior in quality,

proximity to the coal supplies for fuel enabled than London, while it found in Ireland, the

it

its

to sell cheaper

whole of South Wales and West England the markets for which it was destined 106 Sugar refining long remained by its geographical location. one of the

staples of Bristol.

The

refiners of the city petitioned

Parliament in 1789 against the abolition of the slave trade on which "the welfare and prosperity, if not the actual existence, India Islands depend." 107 In 1811 there were sixteen refineries in the town, whose connection with this indus-

of the

West

try ceased only towards the end of the nineteenth century, when bananas replaced sugar. 108

Some of Bristol's most prominent citizens were connected with the sugar refining business. Robert Aldworth, seventeenth century alderman, was closely identified with refining, while he was at the same time a merchant who built two docks to accommodate the increased shipping. 109 William Miles was the outstanding refiner of the eighteenth century. His career is typical of many other cases. Miles came to Bristol with three halfin his pocket, worked as a porter, apprenticed himself to a shipbuilder, saved fifteen pounds, and sailed to Jamaica as a in a merchantman. He ship's carpenter bought a cask or two

pence

of sugar which he sold in Bristol, at a huge profit, and with the proceeds bought articles in great demand in Jamaica and repeated his former investment. Miles soon became very wealthy

and settled in Bristol as a refiner. This was the humble origin of one of the greatest fortunes made in the West Indian trade. Taking his son into partnership, Miles was wealthy enough to 100,000 to enable him to marry the give him a check for daughter of an aristocratic clergyman. The elder Miles became an alderman, and died rich and honored; the younger continued as a

West

and

at his

slaves,

than a million. 110

Indian merchant dealing chiefly in sugar and death in 1848 left property valued at more In 1833 he was in possession of 663 slaves in


75

Trinidad and Jamaica, for which he received Compensation to the

m

amount of

The

i7,85o. frequent association of

Glasgow with

the tobacco in-

The

prosperity of the town much to its sugar dated back the second half to Sugar refining of the seventeenth century. The Wester sugar-house was built

dustry

is

only

a part of the truth.

in the eighteenth refining business.

century was due

at least as

in 1667, followed by the Easter in 1669, and shortly after the South sugar-house and another. Yet another followed in 1701. But Glasgow labored under the disadvantage that before 1707 direct trade relations with the colonies were illegal, and Glasgow's sugar refiners were forced to depend on Bristol for their raw material. By the Act of Union and a happy accident this unsatisfactory situation was brought to an end. Two Scotch officers, Colonel William Macdowall, cadet of an ancient family, and Major James Milliken, while quartered in St. Kitts, wooed and won two heiresses, the widow Tovie and her daughter, owners of great sugar plantations. The missing link had been found. The arrival of the heiresses and their husbands meant that Glasgow became one of the leading ports of entry

West Indian sugar. In new refinery was set up. 112

for the cargoes of

happy event

The

a

the very year of the

majority of the refineries were located in and around

the capital eighty compared with Bristol's twenty. In 1774 there were eight refineries in Liverpool, one of them, the house of Branckers, a firm also engaged in the slave trade, being one

of the most extensive in the whole kingdom. 113 There were others in Manchester, Chester, Lancashire, Whitehaven, Newcastle, Hull, It

may

Southampton and Warrington.

well be asked

why

the refining of the

not done at the source, on the plantations.

raw sugar was

The

division of

labor, between the agricultural operations in the tropical climate, and the industrial operations in the temperate climate, has survived to this day. The original reason had nothing to do with the skill of labor or the presence of natural resources. It was the result of the deliberate policy of the mother country. The ban on sugar refining in the islands corresponded to the ban on iron and textile manufacture on the mainland. Should

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY they have refiners in England or the plantations? asked Sir

Thomas

Clifford in 1671. "Five ships go. for the blacks," was "and not above two if refined in the plantations;

his answer,

and so you destroy shipping, and all that belongs to it; and if you lose this advantage to England, you lose all." Hence the heavy duty placed on refined sugar imported into England,

much as upon the brown sugar. By this policy was called England upon for a larger number of casks for the raw sugar, more coals and victuals were consumed, and the four times as

national revenues increased. 114 Davenant's pleas for permission

of colonial refining 115

fell

on deaf

ears.

was taking place significant that a similar struggle in France, resulting in a similar victory for the mercantilists. It

is

Colbert had permitted the refining of sugar in the French

West

Indies, and raw and refined sugar from the islands paid the same duty in France. But in 1682 the duty on refined sugar was doubled, while two years later, under penalty of a fine of 3,000 livres, it was forbidden to erect new refineries in the islands. A decree of 1698 was even more drastic. The duty on raw sugar from the West Indies was lowered from four to three livres per hundredweight, while the duty on refined sugar was increased from eight to twenty-two and a half livres. This latter figure was the same duty charged on refined sugar from foreign lands: "the drastic nature of the protection afforded the French refiners as against their compatriots in the colonies becomes ap116

parent."

The such

sugar refining interest of England was encouraged by It did not always see eye to eye with the plantlegislation.

ing interest on

whom

it

depended for

supplies.

Under

the mer-

monopoly of the home market, and foreign imports were prohibited. It was therefore cantile

system the sugar planters had a

the policy of the planters to restrict production in order to maintain a high price. Their legal monopoly of the home mar-

ket was a powerful

weapon

While the

price of sugar

the world market

by the

and they used it whole population of England.

in their hands,

mercilessly, at the expense of the

was being naturally forced down

in

increase of sugar cultivation in the French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the British planters

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE were

intent

on maintaining

a

monopoly

price in the

JJ

home

market.

The

friends of the planters

warned them of the

wretched error" they were making, for

"fatal

and

"if the British planta-

tions cannot, or will not, afford sugar, etc., plenty

and cheap

the French, Dutch, and Portuguese do, and will." 117

enough There were not wanting writers, as early as 1730, who urged the government to "open the sluices of the laws, and let in even the French sugar upon them, till they would serve us at least our neighbors are serv'd." 118 In 1739 Jamaica requested assistance from the mother country. The Council of Trade and Plantations issued a clear and unmistakable warning. Jamaica had twice as much land as all the Leeward Islands comas

cheap

as

bined, yet the exports of the Leeward Islands exceeded those of Jamaica. "From whence it would naturally follow that not one half of your lands are at present cultivated, and that Great Britain does not reap half the benefit from your Colony, which

were fully settled." 119 The planters would not listen. In the eighteenth century, they did not have to. The refiners of London, Westminster, Southwark and Bristol protested to Parliament in 1753 against the selfishness of the planters and the "most intolerable kind of a she might do

if it

tax" represented by the higher price of British sugar. The refiners urged Parliament to make it the interest of the sugar the area planters to produce more raw sugar by increasing under cultivation. They were careful, however, not'to pretend to "set ourselves in competition with the inhabitants of all the sugar colonies, either for numbers, wealth, or consequence to

the public." Parliament sidetracked the issue by passing resolutions afyout the encouragement of white settlers in Jamaica. 120

between producers and processors Revolution. Imports of sugar the American developed during declined by one-third between 1774 and 1780. Prices were high, and the refiners, in distress, petitioned Parliament for re-

Another

crisis in relations

the form of the admission of prize sugar. Reading between the lines of the evidence taken by the parliamentary lief in

committee on the subject, we see the conflict of interests between refiner and planter. High prices benefited the planter,


78

while the refiners wanted an increased supply which the planters would not, or could not, give. If they would not, make

them; the refiners of Bristol recommended "a salutary law,"

which would "make

it the interest of the British sugar colonies, to extend the cultivation of their lands, in order to enable them to raise a larger produce, and to send greater quantities of sugar to Great Britain, and thereby become more useful to

and revenue." 121 If they could not, buy elsewhere the French colonies, for example. "Was I a refiner," said one witness, a wholesale grocer,

mother country,

their

"I should

its

trade, navigation,

122 sugars to any other." at the feet of the sugar planter, but,

certainly prefer St.

The chasm was yawning

Domingo

head held proudly in the air, he went his way mumbling the had been taught by the mercantilists and which he had learned not wisely but too well. lesson he

4.

Rum Distillation Yet another colonial raw material gave birth to yet another

English industry. molasses,

One

of the important by-products of sugar is distilled. But rum never at-

from which rum may be

tained the importance of cotton, far less of sugar, as a contribution to British industry, partly, perhaps, because much rum was imported direct from the islands in its finished state. Imports from the islands increased from 58,000 gallons in 1721 to 320,000

one and a quarter million and was over two million between 1765 and gallons steadily 123 i 779 Rum was indispensable in the fisheries and the fur trade, and as a naval ration. But its connection with the triangular trade was more direct still. Rum was an essential part of the cargo of the slave ship, particularly the colonial American slave ship. No slave trader could afford to dispense with a cargo of rum. It was profitable to spread a taste for liquor on the coast. The Negro dealers were plied with it, were induced to drink till 124 One they lost their reason, and then the bargain was struck. in 1730. In 1763 the figure stood at

.

slave dealer, his bag full of the gold paid him for his slaves, stupidly accepted the slave captain's invitation to dinner. He was made drunk and awoke next morning to find his

money

COMMERCE AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE gone and himself stripped, branded and enslaved with

his

79

own

125 In 1765 two disvictims, to the great mirth of the sailors. tilleries were established at for the express purpose Liverpool

of supplying ships bound for Africa. 126 Of equal importance to the mercantilist was the fact that from molasses could be ob-

rum, brandy and low wines imported were an important evidence of interest in the sugar plantations, and many were the

tained, in addition to

from France. The Bristol's

distilleries

jeremiads which they sent to Parliament in defence of their interests and in opposition to the importation of French brandies.

Bishop Berkeley voiced the prevailing feeling when he asked acidly, in strict mercantilist language, "whether if drunkenness be a necessary evil, men may not as well get drunk with the

growth of their own country?"

The eighteenth century in England was notorious for its alcoholism. The popular drink was gin, immortalized by Ho-

Gin Lane. A classic advertisement of a gin shop in "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twoclean straw for nothing." Gin and rum contended for pence,

garth in his

Southwark

read:

pride of place. The West Indian planters argued that the rum they produced was equal to one-fourth of the value of all their other products. To prohibit the sale of rum would therefore be to ruin them, and drive the people to foreign substitutes. The planters ex-

of the evils occasioned by pressed the hope that the suppression not entail the deuse of the excessive spirituous liquors would 127 As saw trade. the of struction it, the question was they sugar

not whether people should drink, but what they should drink. Gin, argued an anonymous writer, was "vastly more destructive to the human frame" than rum. "Gin is a spirit too fiery, acrid,

Rum is a spirit so mild, and inflameing for inward use but. that its if balsamic and benign, properly used and attempered it may be made highly useful, both for the relief and regalement of human nature." 128 This was a strange description of the spirit which the Barbadians more appropriately nicknamed .

.

.

"Kill-Devill."

Against the planters it was contended that the West Indian trade was too unimportant to permit the continuance of a

rum

80


glaring enormity which tended to destroy the health and morals of the people of Great Britain. 129 It is not unlikely that other

were involved. Rum competed with spirits made from corn. The West India interest was therefore at odds with

considerations

the English agricultural interest. The sugar planters charged that distilling from corn tended to raise the price of bread. This

concern for the poor consumer of bread was touching, coming as it did from extortionists who wanted the poor to spend more money on their sugar, and it antedated by a hundred years a similar but more significant conflict between English farmers and English industralists, over cheaper bread or lower

wages for the working classes. "Molasses" embittered the relabetween West Indian sugar planter and English landlord as it embittered relations between planter and mainland colonist, and the West India interest was always quick to recommend its substitution in England whenever there was a grain shortbut in whenever there was a glut of sugar. said, age, they reality "Sweet gentlemen!" wrote an anonymous champion of the

tions

barley counties in 1807. "They have sought a very far fetched 130 and Michael argument in support of their saccharine cause"; Sadler, in

1831,

opposed the

might be made from that did not like it." 131

"A wholesome beverage but the people of England

idea:

article,

The real enemy, however, of the West Indian distiller was not the English farmer but the New England distiller. The New England traders refused to purchase West Indian rum and insisted on molasses, which they themselves distilled, and sent to Newfoundland, the Indian tribes, and above all Africa. The rum trade on the slave coast became a virtual monopoly of New

England. In 1770 New England exports of rum to Africa represented over four-fifths of the total colonial export of that 132

and yet another important vested interest drew its sustenance from the triangular trade. But here, too, lay the year,

seed of future disruption. French

West

Indian molasses was

cheaper than British, because French distilling was not permitted to compete with the brandies of the home country. Rather than feed their molasses to their horses, they preferred to sell it to the mainland colonists. The latter therefore turned


8l

to the French planters, and molasses was one of the principal items in that trade between mainland and the foreign sugar colonies which, as the sequel showed, had far-reaching consequences for the British sugar planters.

5.

Pacotille

The slave cargoes were incomplete without the "pacotille," the sundry items and gewgaws which appealed to the Africans' love of bright colors and for which, after having sold their fellows, they would, late in the nineteenth century, part with their land and grant mining concessions. Articles of glass and

beads were always in demand on the slave coast, and on the plantations there was a great demand for bottles. Most of these

were manufactured in Bristol. 133 One slave dealer reNegro from a prince in return for thirteen beads of coral, half a string of amber, twenty-eight silver bells, and

articles

ceived a fine

three pairs of bracelets for his women; in acknowledgment of this liberality, he presented to the prince's favorite a present of

some rows of

glass

beads and about four ounces of scarlet

134

in Individually these items were of negligible value; a trade of so the aggregate they constituted great importance,

wool.

word "pacotoday to denote compensation for objects

essential a part of the slave transactions that the used in the West Indies tille" is still

commonly

a cheap and

tawdry bauble given

as

of great value. 6.

The

Metallurgical Industries

Slave trading demanded goods more gruesome though not a whit less useful than woolen and cotton manufacturers. Fetters

and chains and padlocks were needed to fasten the Negroes more securely on the slave ships and thus prevent both mutiny and suicide. The practice of branding the slaves to identify

them required red-hot irons. Legal regulations prescribed that on any ship designed for Africa, the East Indies, or the West Indies, "three-fourths of their proportion of beer was to be put in iron bound cask, hooped with iron hoops of good substance, and well wrought iron." 135 Iron bars were the trading medium on a large part of the African coast and were equivalent to four

82

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY bars. 136 Iron bars constituted

nearly three-quarters of the value of the cargo of the Swallow in 1679, nearly onequarter of the cargo of the Mary in 1690, nearly one-fifth of a slave cargo in I733- 137 In 1682 the Royal African Company was

copper

138 exporting about 10,000 bars of iron a year.

too,

found

a useful

market

The

ironmasters,

in Africa.

Guns formed a regular part of every African cargo. Birmingham became the center of the gun trade as Manchester was of the cotton trade. The struggle between Birmingham and London over the gun trade was merely another angle to the struggle for free trade or monopoly which we have already noticed for the slave trade in general between the and capital

the outports. In 1709 and 1710 the gun makers of London in favor of the African petitioned Royal Company's monopoly.

The Birmingham gun makers and

iron makers threw their and influence the weight against company and the London interests. Three times, in 1708, 1709, and 1711, they petitioned against a renewal of the company's monopoly which had been modified in i698. 130 Their trade had increased since then and they feared a renewal of the monopoly, which would subject their manufactures "to one buyer, or to anyone monopolizing society, exclusive of

all

others." 140

In the nineteenth century Birmingham guns were exchanged for African palm-oil, but the eighteenth century saw a less in-

nocent exchange. The Birmingham guns of the eighteenth century were exchanged for men, and it was a common saying that the price of a Negro was one Birmingham gun. The African musket was an important Birmingham export, reaching a total of 100,000 to 150,000 annually. With the British government and the East India Company, Africa ranked as the 141 most important customer of the Birmingham gunmakers. The needs of the plantations too were not to be despised. In

the late seventeenth century the ironmasters, Sitwells, of Derbyshire were producing among their items sugar stoves and rollers for crushing cane in Barbados, and too, was in-

Birmingham,

terested in the plantations. 142 Exports of went to the plantations, though these

wrought iron and

nails

exports tended to fluctuate according to the condition of the sugar trade. As one ironmaster said in 1737: "The bad state of some of our sugar islands


83

some prejudice to the iron-trade; for the conof iron ware, in those islands, is more or less, as their sumption trade for sugar is better or worse." 143 An old historian of the has been

.

.

.

city has left us a picture of Birmingham's interest in the colonial "axes for India, and tomahawks for the natives of

system:

North America; and

to Cuba and the Brazils chains, handcuffs, and iron collars for the poor slaves. .In the primeval forests of America the Birmingham axe struck down the old trees; the cattle pastures of Australia rang with the sound of Birmingham bells; in East India and the West they tended the fields of 144 sugar cane with Birmingham hoes." Along with iron went brass, copper and lead. The exports of brass pans and kettles to Africa dated back before 1660 but increased with free trade after 1698. Thereafter Birmingham began to export large quantities of cutlery and brass goods, and .

.

throughout the eighteenth century British goods effectively sustained competition with foreign in colonial markets. The Cheadle Company, founded in North Staffordshire in 1719, soon became one of the leading brass and copper concerns in England. It extended the scope of its operations to include the brass wire, "the Guinea rods" and the "manelloes" (metal rings worn by the African tribes) used in the African trade. The company's capital increased eleven times between 1734 and 1780 when the company was reorganized. "Starting from small ., it became one of the most beginnings important, if not the most important, of the brass and copper concerns of the eighteenth century." According to tradition, ships sailed to Africa with the holds full of idols and "manelloes," while the cabins were occupied by missionaries "an edifying example of a material good in competition with an immaterial one." 145 The .

.

Baptist Mills of Bristol

produced a prodigious quantity of brass

which, drawn into wire and formed into "battery," was ex146 The Holywell works, in tensively used in the African trade. addition to producing copper sheathing for the Liverpool manufactured brass pans for the West Indian sugar and ships, East India tea merchants, and all varieties of cheap and gaudy brass instruments for the African trade.

147

Brass pans and kettles

to Africa and the plantations, and in one list, after the heading "brass pans," we read "ditto large to wash

were exported


84

their bodies in." 148 tin,

are

a

still

These "bath pans," made now of galvanized normal feature of West Indian life today.

The

needs of shipbuilding gave a further stimulus to heavy there industry. The iron chain and anchor foundries, of which

were many

in Liverpool, lived off the building of ships. Copper for vessels gave rise to local industries in the town the sheathing and adjacent districts to supply the demand. Between thirty and

forty vessels were employed in transporting the copper, smelted in Lancashire and Cheshire, from the works at Holywell to the in Liverpool. 149 ironmaster's interest

warehouses

The

in the

slave

trade

continued

throughout the century. When the question of abolition came before Parliament, the manufacturers of and dealers in iron, copper, brass and lead in Liverpool petitioned against the project, which would affect employment in the town and send forth thousands as "solitary wanderers into the world, to seek 150 In the same year Birmingemployment in foreign climes."

ham

declared that

it

was dependent on the

slave trade to a con-

siderable extent for a large part of its various manufactures. Abolition would ruin the town and impoverish many of its inhabitants. 151

These apprehensions were exaggerated. The munitions defor the commercial wars of the eighteenth century had prepared the ironmasters for the still greater demands to come during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The colonial markets, moreover, were inadequate to absorb the increased production which resulted from the technological innovations. Between 1710 and 1735 iron exports almost trebled. In 1710

mand

the British

West

Indies took over one-fifth of the exports, in

1735 less than one-sixth. In 1710, over one-third of the exports to the plantations went to the sugar islands, in 1735 over onequarter. The peak was reached in 1729, when the West Indies took nearly one-quarter of the total exports, and nearly onehalf of the exports to all the plantations. 162 Expansion at home,

contraction in the sugar islands. In 1783 the ironmasters, too, were beginning to look the other way. But Cinderella, decked

out temporarily in her fancy clothes, was enjoying herself too much at the ball to pay any attention to the hands of the clock.

4-

THE WEST INDIA INTEREST

"OuR TOBACCO

COLONIES," wrote

no such wealthy

planters as

we

Adam

Smith, "send us

see frequently arrive

home

from our

1 sugar islands." The sugar planter ranked among the biggest of the mercantilist epoch. very popular play, "The capitalists West Indian," was produced in London in 1771. It opens with a tremendous reception being prepared for a planter coming to

A

England, as if it were the Lord Mayor who was expected. The servant philosophized: "He's very rich, and that's sufficient. They say he has rum and sugar enough belonging to him, to

make

all

the water in the

The West

Thames

Indian planter was

society in the eighteenth century.

absentee landlordism

into punch." 2 a familiar figure in English

The

explanation

lies

in the

which has always been the curse of the

Caribbean and

is still one of its major problems today. absentee planter once argued that "the climate of our sugar colonies is so inconvenient for an English constitution, that no man will chuse to live there, much less will any man chuse to settle there, without the hopes at least of supporting

One

his family in a more handsome manner, or saving more money, than he can do by any business he can expect in England, or in our plantations upon the continent of America." 3 But the West Indian climate is not disagreeable, and, his fortune once made, the slave owner returned to Britain. Writing in 1689 the agent for Barbados stated that "by a kind of magnetic force England

draws to

which

all

it all

that

is

good in the plantations. It is the center to Nothing but England can we relish or

things tend.

85


86

fancy: our hearts are here, wherever our bodies be. ... All that can rap and rend is brought to England." 4 In 1698 the West

we

were sending back annually to England about three hundred children to be educated, the difference being, according to Davenant, that the fathers went out poor and the children came back rich. 5 "Well," says Mr. Belcour, the planter, in the Indies

comedy "The West

am

I

in

England,

Indian," "for the

at the

first

time in

my life

here

fountain-head of pleasure, in the land of

of elegancies. My happy stars have given me a and the conspiring winds have blown me hither to good estate, 6 it." Returned to England, the planters' fondest wish spend was to acquire an estate, blend with the aristocracy, and remove the marks of their origin. Their presence in England, as Brougham pointed out, had a frequently deleterious effect on English character and morals; where they were numerous and had a bad state of manintroduced acquired land, they commonly ners into the locality. 7 Their colossal wealth permitted lavish expenditures which smacked of vulgarity and excited the envy and disapproval of the less opulent English aristocracy. beauty, of

The

arts,

Merivale, later in the nineteenth century argued that the change from residence to absenteeism was a credit rather than a disgrace to the English character, as evincing a distaste for the deep-rooted hard-heartedness and political economist,

But that peculiar fastidiprofligacy of life in the slave colonies. ousness which shrank from contact with slavery whilst it had

no objection to enjoying the profits of slavery, Merivale could explain only by "the general apology of the inconsistency of human nature." 8 Absenteeism,

however, had serious consequences in the were left to be mismanaged by overseers and

islands. Plantations

attorneys. On occasions governors found it difficult to obtain a quorum for the councils. Many offices were held by a single

and the disproportion between white and black population was increased, aggravating the danger of slave rebellions. The Deficiency Laws failed to restrain the practice of individual,

absenteeism, so the local assemblies tried to confiscate the large tracts of land lying idle and owned by absentees, and proposed their redivision

among small farms. Both measures were opposed

THE WEST INDIA INTEREST by

87

the British government at the insistence of the absentee 9

planters.

Of the sugar planters resident in England the most prominent were the Beckfords, an old Gloucestershire family dating back to the twelfth century. One died fighting for his king on Bosworth Field in 1483, another found in the English conquest of Jamaica a means of retrieving the family fortunes. In 1670 Alderman Sir Thomas Beckford, one of the first of absentee proprietors, was getting 2,000 per annum from his Jamaican property clear of all charges. Peter Beckford became the most distinguished of the new colonists. He held in the course of all the most important military and civil positions in the became President of the Council and later Lieutenantisland,

time

Go vernor "was

any

and Commander-in-Chief. At

his

death in 1710 he and personal of

in possesion of the largest property real in In 1737 his subject

grandson, William, in-

Europe."

herited the family wealth and

became the most powerful West

Indian planter in England. 10 Beckford, on his Wiltshire estate, built Fonthill Mansion, long regarded as the most attractive and splendid seat in the West of England.

was

handsome, uniform edifice, consisting of a centre of and two wings of two stories, connected by corridors, built of fine stone, and adorned with a bold portico, resting on a rustic basement, with two sweeping flights of steps: its apartments were numerous, and splendidly furnished. They displayed the riches and luxury of the east; and on particular occasions were superbly brilliant and dazzling. Whilst its walls were adorned with the most costly works of art, its sideboards and cabinets presented a gorgeous combination of gold, silver, precious metals, and precious stones, arranged and worked by the most tasteful artists and artisans. Added to these splendours, these dazzling objects, apparently augmented and multiplied by large costly mirrors, was a vast, choice, and valuable liSome idea may be formed of the extent, etc., of the brary. house by the measurement of its great entrance hall, in the base"It

four

.

ment

a

stories,

.

.

story,

which was eighty-five

feet ten inches in length,

thirty-eight feet six inches in breadth. Its roof

was

vaulted,

by

and

88


supported by large stone piers. One apartment was fitted up in the Turkish style, with large mirrors, ottomans, etc., whilst others were enriched with fine sculptured marble chimneypieces.""

Beckford, Junior, was not to be outdone. Possessed of a vivid fancy and a vast fortune which, according to the family historian,

could not be

satisfied

with anything commonplace, he

desired novelty, grandeur, complexity and even sublimity. The result was Fonthill Abbey, the construction of which provided

employment

for a vast

number of mechanics and

laborers,

even

new village being built to accomodate some of the settlers. The abbey grounds were in one section planted with every a

species of American flowering shrub and tree, growing in all their native wildness. 12 In 1837 Beckford was awarded 15,160

he owned in Jamaica. 13 The Hibberts were West Indian planters as well as merchants, who, as we have seen, supplied cotton and linen checks for Africa and the plantations. Robert Hibbert lived in Bedfordshire off the income from his West Indian property. His planta-

by way of compensation for 770

slaves

was one of the finest in Jamaica; "though he was always an eminently kind master," his biographer assures us, "he had no repugnance to this kind of property on moral grounds." On his death he left in trust a fund yielding about one thousand tion

pounds per annum for three or more divinity scholarships to encourage the spread of Christianity in its simplest and most the unfettered exercise of private judgintelligible form and ment in matters of religion. 14 A relative, George, was partner in an opulent trading firm in London, and was for many years agent of Jamaica in England. George Hibbert took the lead in the construction of the West India Docks. He was elected first chairman of the board of directors, and today his portrait,

by Lawrence, hangs London Authority. A great

painted

in the

board room of the Port of

collector of books, the sale of his

15 The Hibberts received 31,120 library lasted forty-two days. in compensation for their 1,618 slaves. 16 The family mansion in

Kingston, one of the oldest houses in Jamaica, still stands today, while the family name is perpetuated in the Hibbert Journal,


89

the celebrated quarterly journal devoted to religion, theology and philosophy. First published in October, 1902, the Journal had "the sanction and support of the Hibbert Trustees," who,

however, disclaimed responsibility for the opinions expressed in

17

its

pages.

Also connected with Jamaica were the Longs. Charles Long, at his death, left property in Suffolk, a house in Bloomsbury, and total London, property in Jamaica comprising 14,000 acres.

He

enjoyed a very great income, by far the largest of any Jamaican proprietor of that period, and was accordingly en18 titled to live in His grandson, a Jamaican planter, splendor.

wrote a well-known history of the island. A relative, Beeston Long, Jr., was chairman of the London Dock Company and a Bank director, and his family mansion in Bishopsgate Street, 19 London, was justly famous. Another member of the family, Lord Farnborough, built Bromley Hill Place in Kent, one of the most famous mansions of England, noted for its wonderful ornamental gardens. 20 Not content with his partnership in the Liverpool business house of Corrie and Company engaged in the grain trade, John concerned in the slave traffic as a Gladstone was indirectlv ^ slave owner in the West Indies. "Like many more merchants of reputed probity and honesty, (he) was able to satisfy his conby arguing it to be a necessity." Gladstone, through

science

foreclosures, acquired large plantations in British

Guiana and

Jamaica, while at the same time he was extensively engaged in the West Indian trade. The sugar and other produce which he sold

on the Liverpool Exchange were grown on

his

own

planta-

and imported in his own ships. The fortune amassed by this means permitted him to open up trade connections with Russia, India and China and to make large and fortunate investments in land and house property in Liverpool. He contributed built and endowed largely to the charities of Liverpool, an was and churches, eloquent champion in the town of the Greeks in their struggle for independence. When his famous son, William Ewart, was electioneering in Newark in 1832, a public journal, accurately if not in good taste, reminded the electors that the candidate was "the son of Gladstone of Livertions

90


pool, a person who had amassed a large fortune by West India dealings. In other words, a great part of his gold has sprung from the blood of black slaves." 21 During the greater part of

the agitation for emancipation John Gladstone was chairman of the West India Association, and on one occasion conducted a

memorable controversy

in

one of the Liverpool journals with

Liverpool abolitionist, on the question of Indian slavery. 22 The compensation paid to Gladstone in 1837, in accordance with the Act of 1833, amounted to 85,600 for 2,183 slaves. 23

James Cropper,

a

West

The Codringtons were another well-known family which owed its wealth and status to its slave and sugar plantations. Christopher Codrington was governor of Barbados during the seventeenth century, and his plantations in Barbados and Barbuda were worth 100,000 in modern money. He founded a college there which still bears his name, and on his death left 10,000, most of it for a library, and his valuable collection of books worth 6,000 to All Souls College, Oxford, where they formed the nucleus of the famous Codrington Library. One of his descendants was hero of the naval victory of Navarino in *

the cause of Greek Independence in the nineteenth century. 24 The Warner family was dispersed over the Leeward Islands,

some

in

Antigua, some in Dominica, some in

in Trinidad.

Thomas Warner was

St.

a pioneer

Vincent, some

among

British

colonists in the Caribbean. Joseph, one of the family, rose to be

one of the three leading surgeons of his day, surgeon at Guy's Hospital, and first member of the College of Surgeons founded in 1750. His picture by Samuel Medley is in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons. In the nineteenth century another Warner was President of the Council of Antigua, while

yet another, as Attorney-General of Trinidad, was the great advocate of East Indian immigration. Perhaps the best known of this West Indian family is Pelham Warner, famous English cricketer and

acknowledged authority on the great English

25

game. Other names,

Bryan Edwards,

spectacular, recall the glory that was sugar. historian of the British West Indies at the end

less

of the eighteenth century, would, by his

own

confession, have


9!

and died in oblivion on the small paternal estate in the decayed town of Westbury in Wiltshire, but for his two opulent uncles engaged in sugar cultivation in the West Indies. 20 The Pinneys, well-known in Bristol, owned sugar plantations in Nevis. 27 Joseph Marry at 's son was Captain Frederick Marry at, the famous novelist of sea life, and the inventor of a code of lived

merchant marine not abandoned until i857. 28 Colonel William Macdowall was the most notable figure in Glasgow. "Owner of a noble mansion in the country and a rich estate in the West-Indies, with ships on the seas and cargoes of sugar and rum constantly coming home, he had also the social prestige of his army rank and his long family descent, and must have held the regard of everyone as he stepped, with his signals for the

29 goldheaded cane, along the causeway." Bryan Edwards indignantly denied the charge that his fellow planters were remarkable for gigantic opulence or an ostentatious display of it. The available evidence points to the contall

trary.

The

wealth of the

West

Indians

became

proverbial.

Com-

munities of opulent West Indians were to be found in London and Bristol, and the memorial plaques in All Saints' Church, Southampton, speak eloquently of the social position they once 30

enjoyed.

The

public schools of Eton, Westminster, Harrow, 31 The full of the sons of West Indians.

and Winchester, were

were so numerous, that, when they Londoners complained that the streets were for some gathered, The blocked. distance story is told of how, on a visit to WeyIII and Pitt encountered a wealthy Jamaican mouth, George with an imposing equipage, including out-riders and livery. carriages of the planters

George HI, much

displeased,

is

How

reported to have

said,

"Sugar,

how are sugar, eh? all that sugar! 32 visitors at the West Indian planters were familiar the duties?" 33 their children mingled on resorts of Epsom and Cheltenham; are the duties, eh, Pitt,

terms of equality with the elegant throngs at the Assembly Rooms and the Hot Wells of Bristol. 34 A West Indian heiress

was the

a desirable plum,

and Charles James Fox almost decided that

80,000 fortune of Miss Phipps was the solution to his heavy

35 One might speculate on what effect such gambling debts. a marriage would have had on Fox's career as an abolitionist:.


92

a humble individual in England rose to wealth and affrom some chance legacy of a West Indian plantation. The time came when such a legacy was considered gall and wormwood, 36 but it was not so in the eighteenth century. George Colman's play, "Africans," portrays in Young Mr. Marrowbone, the butcher, a situation that must have been very familiar to the audience. The butcher was left a West Indian

Many

fluence

plantation, and for bullocks." 37

"now

barters for blacks, instead of bargaining

The strength of the planters was increased, too, by the large number of West Indian merchants who drew vast profits from the West Indian trade. According to Professor Namier, "there were comparatively few big merchants in Great Britain in 1761 one connection or another, did not trade with the West and a considerable number of gentry families had interests in the Sugar Islands, just as vast numbers of Englishmen now hold shares in Asiatic rubber or tea plantations or oil

who,

in

Indies,

fields."

38

The two groups

did not always see eye to eye.

At

the outset planters and merchants represented distinct organizadid not always credit tions, and the bond between them

make

itself would not have been a merchant could always have re-

for harmony. But this in

basic cause for conflict, as the

More important than the factor of debt determination to maintain monopoly prices, planters' and in the struggle for the grant of a direct trade to Europe in

course to foreclosure.

was the

1739 ill-feeling between the two groups increased consider39 But by and large the identity of interests was greater ably. and more important than the clash, and planters and merchants coalesced about 1780, when all the strength they could soon to be needed to strengthen the dykes jointly muster was of monopoly against the gathering torrent of free trade. finally

The combination of these two forces, planters and merchants, coupled with colonial agents in England, constituted the powerful West India interest of the eighteenth century. In the classic age of parliamentary corruption and electoral venality, money talked. They bought votes and rotten boroughs and so got into Parliament. Their competition forced up the

their


93

The Earl of Chesterfield was laughed to scorn when he offered 2,500 for a seat for which a West

price of seats. in 1767

No

Indian would offer double. 40

private hereditary English of colonial gold and corruption. The English landed aristocracy were indignant, "vexed, put to great expenses, and even baffled" by the West Indians at elec41 tions. There is an unmistakable note of this concern in the

fortune could

resist this torrent

warning issued by Cumberland

in his

drama to the West

Indian ostentatiously flaunting his wealth and boasting of his plans to spend it. "To use it, not to waste it, I should hope; to treat it, Mr. Belcour, not as a vassal, over whom you have a

wanton and a despotic power; but as a subject, which you are bound to govern with a temperate and restrained authority." 42 In the elections of 1830 a West Indian planter successfully spent 43 The election ex18,000 getting himself elected in Bristol.

penses of the unsuccessful West Indian candidate in Liverpool in the same year cost nearly 50,000, of which a rich West

Indian merchant, slave trader and slaveowner, John Bolton, 44 supplied one-fifth.

The Beckford dynasty was

fittingly represented

in Parlia-

King William was M.P. for Shaftesbury from 1747-1754, and for the metropolis from 1754-1770. Another brother represented Bristol, a third Salis45 bury, while a fourth was intended for a Wiltshire borough. Richard Pennant at one time represented Liverpool. 46 One of the Codringtons was a member of Parliament in I737- 47 George Hibbert represented Seaford from 1806 to i8i2. 48 Edward Colston, the Cunard of the seventeenth century, sat for Bristol from 1710 to I7i3- 49 The West India interest established a monopoly, in all but name, of one Bristol seat. John Gladstone sat first for Woodstock and then for Lancaster; it was his maiden speech of his son, pleasure to listen in May, 1833, to the in M.P. for Newark, defence of slavery on the family estates 50 The great statesman found all his filial feelings inin Guiana. volved in the question of slavery, and his family connections with West Indian sugar plantations brought out all his elo-

ment

in accordance

with

its

wealth.

51 One of the Lascelles sat in Parliament in I757-62 To quence. the bitter end Henry Goulburn fought the West Indian battle.


94

In 1833 he was

still

asking Parliament to

mark the impulse

given to trade and agriculture, and to look at the hamlets that had sprung into towns, in consequence of the connection with the colonies. 53 Parliament paid no heed, and Goulburn had to be content with nearly 5,000 compensation for his 242 slaves. 54

Joseph Marryat of Trinidad, Henry Bright of Bristol, Keith Douglas, Charles Ellis, all were West Indians. Ten out of fifteen members of one of the most important committees of the Society of Planters and Merchants held seats in the English Parliament. 55

To make

assurance doubly sure the

West

Indians, like the

were entrenched not only in the lower house but also in the House of Lords, to defend their plantations and the social structure on which rested. Passage from one house they to another was easy, peerages were in return readily conferred for political support. There are few, if houses in noble any, a a West to modern Indian without writer, England, according 56 strain. Richard Pennant became Lord Penrhyn. The Lascelles, an old Barbadian family, were ennobled and became Hareslave traders,

their descendants is at present married to the of the reigning King of England. The Marquis of Chandos, sponsor of the "Chandos Clause" in the Reform Bill of 1832, owned West Indian plantations and was a spokesman of

woods; one of sister

the

West

India interest, though he lived to see the day when it 57 to advocate the cause of the West Indies.

was almost hopeless

The

Earl of Balcarres possessed sugar plantations in Jamaica. Emancipation found him owner of 640 slaves, for whom he re-

ceived nearly

58

This explains his hysteri12,300 compensation. the of island, to the convention governor

cal opposition, as

made by General Maitland with

the slave leader, Toussaint

L'Ouverture, for the evacuation of Saint Domingue after Britain's abortive effort to conquer the French colony. "It would

be thought somewhat odd," he wrote home, "if the City of London should send over an immense quantity of provisions

and clothing for the use of the sans culotte army assembled for the purpose of invading England!" 59 Lord Hawkesbury, ne 60 Jenkinson, was a West Indian proprietor, and, as President of for lent Council he consistent support to the the Privy Trade,


95

cause of the slave owners and slave traders. For this devotion

were dedicated to him,61 and Liverpool conferred on him the freedom of the city in gratitude tracts in favor of the slave trade

for the essential services rendered to the

town by

his exertions

62 Hawkesbury support of the slave trade. symbolized the connection by assuming the title Earl of Liverpool when raised to the peerage and accepting the Corpora-

in Parliament in

arms with his own.63 It was not only the mother of parliaments that the slaveowners dominated. Like their allies, the sugar merchants and

tion's offer to quarter its

slave traders, they were in evidence everywhere, as aldermen, and councillors. William Beckford was alderman of the mayors

city of

London and twice Lord Mayor. Contemporaries laughed

faulty Latin and loud voice; they were forced to respect wealth, position and political influence. As mayor his civic entertainments were magnificent. On one occasion, at a at his

his

six dukes, two marquises, twenty-three four viscounts, and fourteen barons of the Upper House joined the members of the Commons and went in procession to

sumptuous banquet, earls,

the city to honor him. He remains famous, this slaveowner, for his defence of Wilkes and liberty of speech, indifferent to royal 64

London

Guildhall there stands a splendid honor, with the famous speech, graven in letters of gold on the pedestal, which made George III blush. 05 His brother Richard was also an alderman of the city displeasure.

In the

monument erected

in his

become an alderman of Hibbert an became alderman of London. 66 George The West India interest had powerful friends. Chatham was the consistent defender of West Indian claims, right or wrong, and was a close friend of Beckford. "He should ever consider the sugar colonies as the landed interest of this kingdom, and of London. William Miles lived to

Bristol.

them otherwise." 67 John GladBolton were stone and John vigorous supporters of Canning, it

was

a barbarism to consider

who

always harped on the fearfulness and delicacy and "most awful importance" of the West Indian question.68 Huskisson and Wellington were very cordially disposed to the planters, the latter refusing to "plunder the proprietors in the West in Indies in order to acquire for themselves a little popularity


96

69

the former considering emancipation unattainable 70 But the legislative interposition or statutory enactment.

England,"

by

recalcitrance of the planters and their wilful refusal to make concessions to the anti-slavery sentiment of England later alienated these friends. 71

Canning found West Indian slavery an

slave questions nearly drove Huskisson

unpalatable topic; and the planters seemed to

the final

word was

Indian deputation in

said

on

London

him

insane;

72

British slavery, subjected a

to

mad

Wellington, before

West

some rough treatment. 73

Allied with the other great monopolists of the eighteenth century, the landed aristocracy, and the commercial bourgeoisie of the seaport towns, this powerful West India interest exerted in the unreformed Parliament an influence sufficient to

make every statesman pause, and represented a solid phalanx "of whose support in emergency every administration in turn has experienced the value." 74 They put up a determined resistance to abolition, emancipation, and the abrogation of their

monopoly. They were always on the warpath to oppose any increase of the duties on sugar, which Beckford once described as "a coup-de-grace to our sugar colonies and sugar trade." 75 The West India interest was the enfant terrible of English until American Independence struck the first great blow politics at mercantilism and monopoly. In 1685 the governor of Jamaica protested that any additional duty proposed on sugar would discourage planting, throw new plantations out of cultivation and prevent the enlargement of

By the proposal "Virginia receives a mortal stab, Barbados and the Islands fall into a hectic fever, and Jamaica into a 76 In 1744 the planters sent their case to every consumption." others.

member

of Parliament in an attempt to encourage popular clamor against another proposal to increase the sugar duties.

The

proposal was carried by a majority of twenty-three. "Nor smallness of it matter of surprize to those who con-

was the

how many were either by themselves or their friends, in one part or another of the sugar trade, and concerned deeply that the cause itself was always popular in the House of Commons." 77 The West Indians, however, succeeded in transferring sidered


97

the extra duty proposed on sugar to foreign linens. The whole episode merely illustrated "the difficulties which attended the laying a further duty upon sugar from the number and influence of those concerned directly or indirectly in that extensive branch of trade." 78

The

issue

came up again when

it

was necessary to finance the

Seven Years' War. The landed aristocrat of England was usually the supporter of his brother in the colonies, but when it came to choosing between himself and his distant relative he took the view that "his shirt was near him but his skin was nearer." Beckford, in defence of his fellows, was interrupted by horse79 The magic laughs every time he uttered the word "sugar." was The finger writing. agent for Massachusetts reported in 1764 that there were fifty or sixty West Indian voters who

could turn the balance any side they pleased. 80

It

was the hey-

West

India sugar interest. But in the new century and in the Reformed Parliament there appeared another combination of fifty or sixty voters. It was the Lanca-

day of the

power of

shire cotton interest, laissez faire.

the

and

its

slogan was not

monopoly but

5

.

BRITISH INDUSTRY

AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE

WAS ACCUMULATING great wealth from the triangular The increase of consumption goods called forth by that

BRITAIN trade.

trade inevitably drew in its train the development of the productive power of the country. This industrial expansion re-

quired finance. What man in the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century was better able to afford the ready capital than a West Indian sugar planter or a Liverpool slave trader? have already noticed the readiness with which absentee planters purchased land in England, where they were able to use their wealth to finance the great developments associated with the Agricultural Revolution. must now trace the investment of profits from the triangular trade in British in-

We

We

where they supplied part of the huge outlay for the construction of the vast plants to meet the needs of the new productive process and the new markets. dustry,

A.

i.

THE INVESTMENT OF PROFITS FROM THE TRIANGULAR TRADE

Banking

of the eighteenth century banks established in Liverand Manchester, the slaving metropolis and the cotton pool

Many

INDUSTRY AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE

99

capital respectively, were directly associated with the triangular trade. Here large sums were needed for the cotton factories and

which improved the means of communication between the two towns. Typical of the eighteenth century banker is the transition from tradesman to merchant and then the further progression from merchant to banker. The term "merchant," in the eightfor the canals

eenth century context, not infrequently involved the gradations of slaver captain, privateer captain, privateer owner, before settling down on shore to the respectable business of commerce.

The

varied

activities

of a

Liverpool businessman include:

brewer, liquor merchant, grocer, spirit dealer, bill-broker, banker, etc. Writes the historian: "One wonders what was covered by that 'etc.'" 1 Like the song, the sirens sang, that "etc." is not beyond all conjecture. It included, at some time or other, some one or more aspects of the triangular trade.

The Heywood Bank was founded endured

as a private

bank

until 1883,

in Liverpool in 1773

when

it

and

was purchased by

Bank of Liverpool. Its founders were successful merchants later elected to the Chamber of Commerce. "They had their

the

experience," the historian writes, "of the African trade," besides privateering. Both appear in the list of merchants trading to Africa in 1752 and their African interests survived up to 1807.

The senior partner of one of the branches of the firm was Thomas Parke, of the banking firm of William Gregson, Sons, Parke and Morland, whose grandfather was a successful captain in the West Indian trade. Typical of the commercial interrelationships of the period, the daughter of one of the partners

Heywoods later married Robertson, son of John Gladand their son, Robertson Gladstone, obtained a partnerIn 1788 the firm set up a branch in Manchesship in the bank.

of the stone,

ter, at

the suggestion of

some of the town's leading merchants.

The Manchester branch, called the "Manchester Bank," was well known for many years. Eleven of fourteen Heywood descendants up to 1815 became merchants or bankers. 2 The emergence of Thomas Leyland on the banking scene until the early years of the nineteenth century, investments in the African slave trade dated back to the

was delayed but

his

100


was quarter of the eighteenth. Leyland, with his partners, one of the most active slave traders in Liverpool and his profits were immense. In 1802 he became senior partner in the banking firm of Clarkes and Roscoe. Leyland and Roscoe: curious combination! Strange union of the successful slaver and the

last

opponent of slavery! Leyland struck off on his own more consistent partnership with his slave partner Bullins, and the title of Leyland and Bullins was borne proudly and unsmirched for ninety-four years until the amalgamation of the bank, in 1901, with the North and South Wales Bank consistent

in 1807, in a

Limited. 3

The Heywoods and Leylands

are only the outstanding exin the banking rule the of general history of eighteenth amples was also slave William banker, Gregson, century Liverpool. and of a ropeowner trader, shipowner, privateer, underwriter,

walk. Francis Ingram was a slave trader, member of the African Company in 1777, while he also had a share in a ropery business, and embarked on a privateering enterprise in partnership with Thomas Leyland and the Earles. The latter themselves had amassed a huge fortune in the slave trade, and remained slave traders right up to 1807. The founder of Hanly's bank was Captain Richard Hanly, slave trader, whose sister was herself married to a slave trader. Hanly was a prominent member

of the "Liverpool Fireside," a society composed almost enof captains of vessels, slavers, and privateers, with a tirely sprinkling of superior tradesmen.

Robert Fairweather,

like

Hanly, was slave trader, member of the Liverpool Fireside, merchant and banker. Jonas Bold combined both slave and West Indian trades. One of the Company of Merchants trading to Africa from 1777 up to 1807, Bold was a sugar refiner, and became a partner in Ingram's bank.

Thomas

to a merchant banker

Fletcher began his career as apprentice carried on an extensive trade with

who

Jamaica. Raised to a partnership, Fletcher later became successively Vice-Chairman and Chairman of the Liverpool West India Association, and at his death his assets included interests in mortgages on a coffee and sugar plantation, with the slaves

thereon, in Jamaica. Charles Caldwell, of the banking firm of


IOI

Charles Caldwell and Co., was a partner in Oldham, Caldwell, and Co., whose transactions were principally in sugar. Isaac Hartman, another banker, owned West Indian plantations; while James Moss, banker and prominent citizen in the eighteenth century, had some very large sugar plantations in British

Guiana. 4

What

has been said of Liverpool

is equally true of Bristol, over the meeting of the inPresiding fluential committee set in Bristol in 1789 to up oppose abolition was William Miles. Among the members of the committee were Alderman Daubeny, Richard Bright, Richard Vaughan, John

London and Glasgow.

Cave and Philip Protheroe. All six were bankers in Bristol. Cave, Bright and Daubeny were partners in the "New Bank" established in 1786. Protheroe was partner in the Bristol City Bank. William Miles bought a leading partnership in the old banking house of Vaughan, Barker and Company; two of his sons were mentioned in 1794, and "Miles's Bank," as it was 5 popularly called, had a lengthy and prosperous career. For London only one name need be mentioned, when that is Barclay. Two members of this Quaker family, David and Alexander, were engaged in the slave trade in 1756. David began his career in American and West Indian commerce and became one of the most influential merchants of his day. His father's house in was one of the finest in the city Cheapside of London, and was often visited He was not by royalty.

name

merely a slave trader but actually owned a great plantation in Jamaica where, we are told, he freed his slaves, and lived to find that "the black skin enclosed hearts full of gratitude and minds capable of improvement as the proudest white." The Barclays married into the banking families of Gurney and Freame,

as

like so

many

other intermarriages in other branches of indus-

try which kept Quaker wealth in Quaker hands. From the combination sprang Barclay's Bank whose expansion and prog6 beyond the scope of this study. of banking in Glasgow was intimately connected with the triangular trade. The first regular bank began busi-

ress are

The

ness in

rise

1750.

Known

as

the Ship Bank, one of the original

partners was Andrew Buchanan, a tobacco lord of the

city.


IO2

Another was the same William Macdowall whose meeting with the sugar heiresses of St. Kitts had established both the fortunes of his house and those of the city. A third was Alexander Houston, one of the greatest West Indian merchants of the was one city, whose firm, Alexander Houston and Company, of the leading

West

Indian houses in the kingdom. This firm

it-

only grew out of the return of the two Scotch officers and their island brides to the city. For three-quarters of the cenself

tury the firm carried on an immense trade, owning many ships and vast sugar plantations. Anticipating the abolition of the slave trade, it speculated on a grand scale in the purchase of slaves. The bill, however, failed to had to be The slaves pass. fed and clothed, their price fell heavily, disease carried them off

by

and

the hundreds.

this

was the

The

firm consequently crashed in 1795, Glasgow had ever

greatest financial disaster

seen.

The

success of the Ship

Bank stimulated the formation of

The Arms Bank was founded in the same year, with one of the leading partners Andrew Cochrane, another tobacco lord. The Thistle Bank followed in 1761, an aristocratic bank, whose business lay largely among the rich West Indian merchants. One of the chief partners was John Glassford, who carried on business on a large scale. At one time he owned twenty-five ships and their cargoes on the sea, and his other banks.

annual turnover was more than half a million sterling, 7 2.

Heavy Industry

Heavy industry played an important role in the progress of the Industrial Revolution and the development of the triangular trade. Some of the capital which financed the growth of the metallurgical industries was supplied directly

angular trade. It was the from the capital accumulated that financed James

Watt

Watt and

West

by

the

tri-

Indian trade

the steam engine. Boulton and

received advances from Lowe, Vere, Williams and Jennings later the Williams Deacons Bank. Watt had some anxious moments in 1778 during the American Revolution when the West Indian fleet was threatened with capture by


103

the French. "Even in this emergency," wrote Boulton to him Vere and "Lowe, hopefully, Company may yet be saved, if ye West Indian fleet arrives safe from ye French fleet ... as many of their securities on it." 8

depend

The bank pulled through and the precious invention was safe. The sugar planters were among the first to realize its importance. Boulton wrote to Watt in 1783: "... Mr. Pennant,

who

a very amiable

man, with ten or twelve thousand pounds was also Mr. Gale and Mr. Beeston Long, who have some very large sugar plantations there, who wish to see steam answer in lieu of is

a year, has the largest estate in Jamaica; there

horses." 9

One

of the leading ironmongers of the eighteenth century, Antony Bacon, was intimately connected with the triangular

His partner was Gilbert Francklyn, a West Indian planter, who later wrote many letters to the Lord President of

trade.

the Committee of

Privy Council emphasizing the importance of taking over the French sugar colony of Saint Domingue in 10 the war with Bacon, like so many revolutionary France. ventured into the African trade. He others, began a lucrative

commerce

in first victualling troops on the coast and then supplying seasoned and able Negroes for government contracts in the West Indies. the 1768-1776 he received almost

During years 67,000 under this latter heading. In 1765 he set up his iron

works

at Merthyr Tydfill which expanded rapidly owing to government contracts during the American war; in 1776 he set up another furnace at Cyfartha. The iron ore for his furnaces was exported from Whitehaven, and as early as 1740 Bacon took a part in improving its harbor. Bacon made a fortune out of his contracts with the

British

government.

veritable mineral

He

retired

artillery in 1782

kingdom. His ironworks

having acquired a Cyfartha he leased

at

to Crawshay, reserving for himself a clear annuity of 10,000, and out of Cyfartha Crawshay himself made a fortune. He

Penydaren to Homfray, the man who perfected the puddling process; Dowlais went to Lewis and the Plymouth works to Hill. The ordinance contract had already been transferred to Carron, Roebuck's successor. No wonder that it was sold

IO4


stated that orbit."

Bacon considered himself

as

"moving

in a superior

11

William Beckford became a master ironmonger

in iy53. 12

Part of the capital supplied for the Thorncliffe ironworks, bein came from a razor-maker, Henry Longden, who 1792, gun received a bequest of some fifteen thousand pounds from a

wealthy uncle, a West Indian merchant of 3.

Sheffield. 13

Insurance

In the eighteenth century, when the slave trade was the most valuable trade and West Indian property among the most valuable property in the British Empire, the triangular trade ocan in the eyes of the rising insurance cupied important position

companies. In the early years, when Lloyd's was a coffee house and nothing more, many advertisements in the London Gazette about runaway slaves listed Lloyd's as the place where they should be returned. 14

The

earliest extant

advertisement referring to Lloyd's, dated

with the sale of three ships by auction. The ships were cleared for Barbados and Virginia. The only project listed at Lloyd's in the bubbles of 1720 concerned trade to Barbary and Africa. Relton, the historian of fire insurance, states 1692, deals

that insurance against fires in the West Indies had been done at Lloyd's "from a very early date." Lloyd's, like other insurance

companies, insured slaves and slave ships, and was vitally interested in legal decisions as to what constituted "natural death" and "perils of the sea." Among their subscriptions to public heroes and merchant captains is one of 1804 to a Liverpool

captain who, on passage from Africa to British Guiana, successfully beat off a French corvette and saved his valuable cargo. The third son of their first secretary, John Bennett, was

agent for Lloyd's in Antigua in 1833, and the only known porof his father was recently discovered in the West Indies. One of the most distinguished chairmen of Lloyd's in its long history was Joseph Marryat, a West Indian planter, who successfully and brilliantly fought to maintain Lloyd's monopoly of marine insurance' against a rival in the House of trait

Commons

company

in

1810,

where he was opposed by another West


105

famous Cardinal Manning. 15 Marryat was 15,000 compensation in 1837 for 391 slaves in Trini-

Indian, father of the

awarded dad and Jamaica. 16

In 1782 the West Indian sugar interest took the lead in starting another insurance company, the Phoenix, one of the first 17 companies to establish a branch overseas in the West Indies.

The

Liverpool Underwriters' Association was formed in 1802. Chairman of the meeting was the prominent West Indian mer18 chant, John Gladstone.

B.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH INDUSTRY TO 1783

was that the Abbe Raynal, one of the most progressive spirits of his day, a man of wide learning in close touch with the French bourgeoisie, was able to see that the labors of

Thus

it

the people in the West Indies "may be considered as the princithe rapid motion which now agitates the unipal cause of 19

The triangular trade made an enormous contribution to Britain's industrial development. The profits from this trade

verse."

fertilized the entire

instances

must

productive system of the country. Three The slate industry in Wales, which pro-

suffice.

vided material for roofing, was revolutionized by the new methods adopted on his Carnarvonshire estate by Lord Pen-

who, as we have seen, ow ned sugar plantations in rhyn, Jamaica and was chairman of the West India Committee at the end of the eighteenth century. The leading figure in the first 20

L

great railway project in England, which linked Liverpool and Manchester, was Joseph Sandars, of whom little is known. But

withdrawal in 1824 from the Liverpool Anti-Slavery Society is of great importance, as at least showing a reluctance to

his

21 press the sugar planters.

Three other men prominently identiwith the undertaking had close connections with the General Gascoyne of Liverpool, a stalwart triangular trade West India interest, John Gladstone and John of the champion Moss. 22 The Bristol West India interest also played a prominent 23 part in the construction of the Great Western Railway. But it must not be inferred that the triangular trade was fied


IO6

the economic development. solely and entirely responsible for The growth of the internal market in England, the ploughing-in of the profits

from industry

to generate

still

further

a large part. capital and achieve still greater expansion, played But this industrial development, stimulated by mercantilism, later outgrew mercantilism and destroyed it.

In 1783 the shape of things to come was clearly visible. The steam engine's potentialities were not an academic question. in mines Sixty-six engines were in operation, two-thirds of these

and foundries. 24 Improved methods of coal mining, combined with the influence of steam, resulted in a great expansion of the iron industry. Production increased four times between 1740 and 1788, the number of furnaces rose by one-half.25 The iron bridge and the iron railroad had appeared; the Carron Works had been founded; and Wilkinson was already famous as "the father of the iron trade." Cotton, the queen of the Industrial Revolution, responded readily to the new inventions, unhamp-

ered as

peded the

it

its

new

traditions and guild restrictions which imolder rival, wool. Laissez faire became a practice in industry long before it penetrated the text books as

was by the

orthodox economic theory. The spinning jenny, the water frame, the mule, revolutionized the industry, which, as a result, showed a continuous upward trend. Between 1700 and 1780 imports of raw cotton increased more than three times, exports of cotton goods fifteen times. 26 The population of Manchester 27 by nearly one-half between 1757 and I773, the numbers engaged in the cotton industry quadrupled between 28 Not only heavy industry, cotton, too the 1750 and I785. two industries that were to dominate the period 1783-1850 was gathering strength for the assault on the system of monopoly which had for so long been deemed essential to the existence and prosperity of both. The entire economy of England was stimulated by this

increased

beneficent breath of increased production. The output of the Staffordshire potteries increased fivefold in value between 1725

and I777- 29 The tonnage of shipping leaving English ports more than doubled between 1700. and 1781. English imports increased fourfold between 1715 and 1775, exports trebled be-

INDUSTRY AND THE TRIANGULAR TRADE tween 1700 and liver, tied

107

30

English industry in 1783 was like Gulthe Lilliputian restrictions of mercantilism.

lyyi.

down by

Two outstanding figures of the eighteenth century saw and, what was more, appreciated the irrepressible conflict: Adam Smith from his professorial chair, Thomas Jefferson on his plantation.

Adam

Smith denounced the folly and

injustice

which had

New

directed the project of establishing colonies in the World. He opposed the whole system of monopoly, the keystone of the colonial arch, on the ground that it restricted the first

productive power of England as well as the colonies. If British industry had advanced, it had done so not because of the monopoly but in spite of it, and the monopoly represented

nothing but the sacrifice of the general good to the interests of a few, the sacrifice of the interest of the home consumer to that of the colonial producer. In the colonies themselves the ban on colonial manufactures seemed to him "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind badges of slavery imposed upon them, without .

reason,

.

.

impertinent

any

sufficient

by the groundless jealousy of the merchants and

manufacturers of the mother country." British capital had been forced from trade with neighboring countries to trade with

more

distant countries;

money

that could have been used to

improve the lands, increase the manufactures, and extend the commerce of Great Britain had been expended in fostering a trade with distant areas from which Britain derived nothing (!) and frequent wars. It was a fit system for a nawhose government was influenced by shopkeepers. 31 The Wealth of Nations was the philosophical antecedent of the American Revolution. Both were twin products of the same cause, the brake applied by the mercantile system on the de-

but

loss

tion

velopment of the productive power of England and her Adam Smith's role was to berate intellectually "the mean and malignant expedients" 32 of a system which the armies colonies.

of George Washington dealt a mortal of America.

fields

wound on

the battle-

6-

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

IN 1770 the continental colonies sent to the West Indies nearly one-third of their exports of dried fish and almost all their pickled fish; seven-eighths of their oats, seven-tenths of their corn, almost all their peas and beans, half of their flour, all their butter and cheese, over one-quarter of their rice, almost all their onions; five-sixths of their pine, oak and cedar boards, over half their staves, nearly all their hoops; all their horses, 1 sheep, hogs and poultry; almost all their soap and candles. As Professor Pitman has told us, "It was the wealth accumulated from West Indian trade which more than anything else underlay the prosperity and civilization of New England and the

Middle Colonies." 2 But in the imperial scheme of the eighteenth century the mainland colonies ran a bad second. Sugar was king, and the West Indian islands the sugar bowl of Europe. The acquisition of Jamaica made Cromwell so happy that he refused to transact any further business on the day when the glad tidings was announced. He would have taken a week's holiday if he had

captured Hispaniola, the French part of which, Saint Domingue, later became the pearl of the Antilles and the bane of the British planters. Barbados was the "fair Jewell" of His Majesty's Crown, a little pearl more precious and rare than any the kings of Europe possessed, 3 and in 1661 Charles II showed its importance by creating thirteen baronets among its planters in a single 4 day. The governorship of Jamaica ranked next in colonial appointments to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, and the postal


109

system made better provision for the islands than for the mainland.

Mercantilists looked askance at the

northern colonies in

particular. They were full of farmers, merchants, fishermen, seamen but no planters. They were, with the exception of

their yet

undeveloped manufactures, in a very literal sense 5 Rivalry with Old England was inevitable. They with the home country in the fisheries, which becompeted came a nursery for the seamen of New England. In their agri-

New England.

cultural products they

were enabled, by virtue of

their situa-

tion, to undersell their English rivals in island markets. By this competition England was losing, in sales and freights, two and

a half millions sterling a year. "Can any one think from hence," asked an anonymous writer, "that the trade and navigation of our colonies are worth one to this nation?" 6 Sir Josiah

groat Child pointed out that ten men in Massachusetts did not provide employment for a single Englishman at home. "New England," he concluded, "is the

most prejudicial plantation to

this

7

kingdom." Chichester would have preferred to labor with his hands in Ireland than "dance and sing in Virginia." 8 Petty said

bluntly that the inhabitants of New England should be re9 Four separate efforts were made patriated or sent to Ireland.

New

Englanders to remove

to the Bahamas,

to Trinidad, to Maryland, and to Virginia.

Cromwell looked

to persuade the

New

England "only with an eye of pity, as poor, cold and Orders of the Council of State were sent in 1655 to the governors and inhabitants holding out tempting offers to

on

useless."

10

go to Jamaica "to enlighten those parts ... by people who fear the Lord; that those of New England, driven from the land of their nativity into that desert and barren wilderness, for conscience* sake may remove to a land of

know and

11

plenty."

Northern colonies were squeezed out of the provisions trade, they would be unable to pay for British manufactures, the export of which was more

These views were too extreme.

If the

valuable to England than the export of agricultural commodiand salted meat. What was much worse, the colonists might

ties

thereby be tempted to develop their

own

industries. Better

110


then,

Davenant concluded, that they should have the food

trade. 12

For the West Indian colonies needed food.

If

they were to

concentrate on the sugar to which the economic specialization of the mercantile epoch confined them, they had no back country where staples could not be raised, and their cash crop was too profitable for them to afford the luxury of diverting land and labor to cattle grazing and food crops. "Men are so intent

upon planting sugar," a correspondent wrote to Governor Winthrop in 1647 about the West Indies, "that they had rather buy foode at very deare rates than produce it by labour, so infinite

The

the profitt of sugar workes after once accomplished." 13 tradition was thereby established by which sugar became is

"the wheat or bread" of the

West

Indies.

14

Only the

possession

of the mainland colonies permitted this sugar monopoly of the West Indian soil. "To subsist a colony in America," wrote the

Abbe Raynal,

"it

is

necessary to

cultivate

a

province in

15

Britain voluntarily abdicated this privilege, as the Europe." lesser of two evils, to the mainland colonists. Mercantilism was

ultimately destroyed as a bad system, but it is absurd not to recognize that it was a system, and that there was method in its badness.

Thus

did the

North American

colonies

come

to have a

economy, purveyors of the their and needed the slaves, and the sugar planters by supplies New Englanders came to be regarded as the Dutchmen of America. The mixed husbandry of the Northern and Middle recognized place in imperial

as

colonies supplemented the specialized agriculture of the West Indies, as in the nineteenth century it fed the cotton and rice

New

South. As early as 1650 the Engregions of the American were land colonies feeding their "elder sisters," Virginia and Barbados. 16 Winthrop assigned the credit to Providence, 17 but

much

do with the arrangement. "His ma collonys in these parts," wrote Governor Willoughby of Barbados in 1667, "cannot in tyme of peace prosper, nor in tyme of war subsist, without a correspondence with the people mercantilism had

to

tya

Newe

18 Not only food, but horses to supply the England." motive power of the tread-mills used in sugar manufacture, and

of


III

lumber for buildings, were the articles most in demand in the islands. "There is no island the Brittish possess in the West Indies," wrote Samuel Vetch in 1708, "that is capable of subsisting without the assistance of the Continent, for to them we transport their bread, drink and all the necessaryes of humane life, their cattle and horses for cultivating their plantations, lumber and staves of all sorts to make casks for their rumm, sugar and molasses, without which they could have none, ships to transport their goods to the European markets, nay, in very houses they inhabitt are carryed over in frames,

short, the

together with shingles that cover them, in so much that their being, much more their well being, depends almost entirely 19 upon the Continent." The West Indian planters entertained

no

illusions

horses.

The

about the importance of mainland provisions and Barbadians, wrote a Boston factor in 1674, are

of the greate prejudis which will accrue to them loose the benefitt of those two commodyties, which yf they are vendable in noe part of y e world but England and "all sensable

New

20

Virginia."

This was deliberate policy on the part of statesmen in England and the planters in the colonies. Many of the articles exEngland to the islands could have been proported by

New

duced

in the islands themselves. But, as a

Jamaican planter

were able to maintain itself with diet and what would become of the New England

asked, "If this island

other necessaries trade?" 21

The answer is

that without the sugar islands the mainhave received a serious setback. They be-

would came "the key to the Indies," 22 without which the islands would have been unable to feed themselves except by a diverland colonies

sion of profitable sugar land to food crops, to the detriment not only of England farmers but British shipping, British

New

sugar refining, and the customs revenue, glory and grandeur of England. In 1698 Parliament rejected a proposal to prohibit the export of corn, meal, flour, bread and biscuit from England

The

prohibition "may put the inhabitants provisions themselves, instead of sugarcanes, cptton, ginger, and indico; which will be greatly prejudi28 cial to England, in respect of its navigation and riches."

to the sugar islands.

there

upon planting

112


Economic

between

relations

islands

and mainland were

Indians owned propstrengthened by on the North Americans owned mainland, erty plantations in the islands. South Carolina was settled from Barbados. The individual contacts.

Middletons, Bulls and plantations in Jamaica land slave trader, was

West

Colletons of South Carolina owned and Barbados. Aaron Lopez, Rhode Is-

owner of

Alexander Hamilton was born

a sugar plantation in Antigua.

in Nevis.

The Gedney

Clarkes

of Salem are the outstanding example of North American success in the islands. The father owned extensive plantations in

Barbados and Guiana. His son became surveyor general of customs in Barbados, member of the House of Assembly and subsequently of the Council. North Americans soon discovered the value of

West

Indian sunshine,

West

Indians sought in

North America the recovery of broken constitutions. advise Adam Chart," wrote an American to friends

"I

would

in Phila-

delphia, "to begin another house directly and call it the Barbados Hotel, putting up for a sign, the worn-out West Indian,

dying of a dropsy from intemperate living." West Indian heiresses, it is said, were as desirable in North America as they were in England. 24 In exchange for their provisions the mainland colonists took West Indian sugar, rum and molasses, in such quantities that as early as 1676 the English merchants complained that New was England becoming the great mart and staple of colonial 25 It was a mutual produce. interdependence between the two units. The maintenance of harmony imperatively demanded two things: island production of sugar and molasses must be sufficient to satisfy mainland consumption; island consumption of mainland staples must keep pace with mainland production. At best this would have been difficult, because of the relative size of the two interdependent areas. But the impending conflict could have been postponed in one of two ways or both. In the first place the British sugar planter could have extended his cultivation. More land would have required more slaves who would have produced more sugar and called for greater supplies of food. Jamaica could have done this more easily than Barbados, which in the eighteenth century was already


113

suffering from the inevitable consequences of slave labor and quick extraction of profit from the soil. There was fresh land

abundance

in

in Jamaica.

more sugar

The second remedy was

the acquisi-

This would have appeased, parthe legitimate grievances of the mainland. But these, the tially, only possible solutions without resort to force, the British sugar planters resolutely opposed. The cultivation of fresh lands and tion of

colonies.

the acquisition of more sugar colonies meant a greater supply of sugar in the British market and a consequent reduction of price.

The

Barbadians had very early in their history looked

apprehensively at the extension of British sugar conquests. They 26 opposed British settlement of Surinam; they resented the drain

of their white servants to the Leeward Islands, and when asked the governor of Jamaica to contribute to an expedition to

by

put down piracy in the Leeward Islands, they replied that they would not spend twenty shillings to ^save the Leeward Islands and Jamaica. 27 In 1772 it was proposed in Parliament that adequate security be offered to foreigners willing to advance money for the development of the sugar islands annexed after the Seven Years' War. The proposal was warmly opposed, as

an "impolitic innovation," by the West Indian planters. 28 It was the old division, in x the words of Professor Namier, between "saturated planters" and "planters on the make." 29

The

foreign sugar islands, too, were already illustrating the law of slave production. Less exhausted than the longer-settled

English islands, cultivation in the French islands was easier and the cost of production less. As early as 1663, a mere twenty years after the rise of the sugar industry, Barbados was "decay30 and the complaints of soil exhaustion grew more ing fast,"

numerous and more

In 1717 Barbados, according to plaintive. the Board of a representation to Trade, needed five times the and more head of cattle and horses number of Negroes many

than the French islands to cultivate a given acreage; one slave 31 in French Saint Domingue was equivalent to four in Jamaica. In 1737 the Barbadian owner of a plantation of one thousand acres, which required a capital investment of fifty thousand

pounds, was making a profit of two per cent; a similar plantation in the French islands cost one-sixth as much, and yielded

114


a profit of eighteen per cent. 32 There was some exaggeration in these figures, but the fundamental superiority of the French

sugar planter, as a result of large tracts of

fertile,

unexhausted

was notorious. French sugar was invading the European markets and selling at half the price it was sold at in England. 33 Acquisition of such islands would have meant the eclipse of the older British planters. The latter, therefore, demanded their soil,

destruction rather than their acquisition. The governor of Jamaica wrote in 1748 that unless French Saint Domingue was

destroyed during the war, it would, on the return of peace, ruin the British sugar colonies by the quality and cheapness of its production. 34 During the Seven Years' War, Britain captured islands

Cuba from Spain and Guadeloupe from France. Both were restored to

their

owners

in 1763, Britain taking in

return Florida and Canada.

To

rationalize this decision in the light of the

importance

of the different areas today misses the whole point. Cuba was still an ugly duckling in 1763, but any fool could have guessed

what a beautiful swan it would eventually turn out to be. There was no excuse where Guadeloupe was concerned. The "few acres of snow," as Voltaire derisively described Canada, could boast only of furs; Guadeloupe had sugar. "What does a few hats signify," asked a shrewd anonymous writer in 1763,

"compared with that

article

out, too, that the

to keep

way

of luxury, sugar?"

He

pointed

North America dependent was

to leave the French in Canada. 35

inconceivable that the British ministry of the day was ignorant of what was public knowledge, in England, France It is

and America. Between 1759 and 1762

British imports from "Quebec" totalled 48,000, exports to Quebec 426,400. British 2,004,933 between imports from Guadeloupe amounted to

1759 and 1765, exports to Guadeloupe to 475,237. British im263,084 between 1762 and 1766, ports from Havana were to Havana 123,421. Compare Canada and Florida with exports

Grenada and Dominica, two of the West Indian conquests that were retained in 1763. Up to 1773 British imports from Grenada amounted to eight times the imports from Canada, British exports to Canada were double those to Grenada. Imports from


115

Dominica were more than eighteen times the imports from Florida; exports to Dominica were only one-seventh less than those to Florida. 36 Clearly Canada and Florida were retained not because they were more valuable than Cuba or Guadeloupe, but precisely because they were less valuable. Thus the peace treaty of 1763 simply makes no sense unless it is

1763

another victory for the powerful West India proved ultimately to be a Pyrrhic victory, but in

regarded

interest. It

as

was none the

it

less a

victory.

The two most

strenuous

advocates of the return of Guadeloupe were two West Indian 37 and Beckford's influence with planters, Beckford and Fuller,

Chatham was

notorious.

"Thus Guadeloupe, one of the

acquisitions Britain ever made, acquires

many powerful

greatest

enemies

from private views, and has nothing to plead but her public an advantage often found too feeble an opponent to the utility 38 The West Indians had two aims private interest of a few." in view. to wished prevent the French from making They Canada a North America, a source of supplies for their sugar colonies after 1783

a baseless fear, as the British sugar planter realized when Canada proved a poor substitute for the lost

colonies; and, more important, they were determined to keep a dreaded rival out of the British sugar market. So Chatham conquered in the islands to annex on the continent,

Northern

conquered sugar to annex furs. The question aroused great controversy in England, and Chatham once asked whether he should be hanged for returning Canada or returning Guade39 If there was loupe. any hanging to be done, Beckford had the best claim. It all

amounted

to this

the whole empire

was

to be

brow-

beaten into paying tribute to the sugar planters and accepting sugar at a monopoly price because it was British grown. The

mainland colonists turned naturally,

if

unpatriotically, to the

foreign sugar colonies. "Forgetting all ties of duty to his Majesty," so ran a petition of London merchants in 1750, "the interest of their

laws,"

40

mother-country, and the reverence due to

the mainland colonists

was demanded by

saw only

its

that increased trade

their increased production. If they could not trade with foreign sugar colonies become British, they would

Il6


trade with those colonies outside the imperial framework even in wartime. Their existence was at stake. The tug-of-war

between

and mainland had begun, and thereafter the North Americans were always "jarring." 41 the mainland colonist did not boycott the British Naturally islands. It would have been cutting off his own nose to sugar the face. Instead the mainland continued to spite sugar planter's the British islands. But in return supply they insisted on cash, which drained the islands of specie and raised the specter of inflation. In 1753 the total value of the trade between Northern colonies and Jamaica was estimated at 75,000 sterling. The Northern colonists took in return products to the value of

West

islands

Indians and

was carried away in cash. 42 With the cash French islands where they bought sugar at cheaper rates and the molasses which the French planter was not allowed to distil into rum because it would compete with French brandies. The British sugar planters lost a market for their sugar and rum. Their French rivals stole this market from them, while in addition they received the supplies they needed to enable them to compete on more advantageous terms 25,000; the rest they went to the

with the

British.

This complicated triangular trade of the mainland was a complete violation of the British imperial scheme. The sugar The smallest sugar island, in planters thought it reprehensible. their view, was ten times more valuable to England than New 43 It was a contest, they argued, not between colony England. and colony but between England and France for the control of

he sugar trade. 44 Strict mercantilists endorsed this view.

ment,

it

was

The French govern-

enalleged, not only connived at the trade, but 45 in order to depress the British sugar colonies. called it a licentious and pernicious commerce,

couraged it, Postlethwayt and was quick to see that it had "too much contributed to loosen the dependency of our colonies upon their mothercountry, and have produced such connection of interests between them and those of France, as have tended to alienate them from Great Britain, and to make it too indifferent to them whether they were under a French or a British govern-


1

17

ment." 46 Chatham echoed Postlethwayt.

It was "an illegal and submost pernicious trade flagitious practices, so utterly versive of all laws, and so the to well-being highly repugnant of this kingdom." 47 It is not clear, however, why this American trade should have been singled out for condemnation. It was no different from the trade carried on from Jamaica with the Spanish colonies, by which much Spanish colonial sugar was .

.

.

smuggled into England as British colonial produce. The North American policy of supplying the French planters with provisions was at least no more reprehensible than the British of them with slaves. policy supplying The mainland colonists countered that "the one great end always aimed at by the sugar planters, (was) that they may raise what further prices they shall think fit upon their fellowsubjects, more especially those in North America, for the necessaries of life." 48 It was absurd for the planters to attempt to maintain monopoly prices in England when the laws of supply and demand were operating all over Europe to reduce

the price of sugar in response to an increasing supply; it would be as sensible for them "to pray for an Act of Parliament to enable them to wash their blackamoors white." 49 These "over-

grown West

Indians" 50

ing themselves on the indigent. They their gilded

who were

pleading distress and throwof Parliament were not poor and

mercy were wealthy

planters

who

wished to

roll in

London at the "What would we say to

the streets of

equipages through 51 expense of the North Americans. a man who should ask our charity in an embroider 'd coat?" 52

mainland colonies as well as those of the consumers were to be sacrificed to a handful of pampered sugar barons in tiny Barbados, then it would be

If the interests of the

English

were sunk in the sea. 53 "It appears to me," wrote John Dickinson, "no paradox to say that the public would be as great a gainer, if estates here (in the West Indies) were so moderate that not a tenth part of the West Indian gentlemen who now sit in the House of Commons could obtain better

if

that island

that frequently expensive honour." 54 Pennsylvania produced a curious argument: the islands were less useful to England

than the mainland; their slaves were naked, they had few white

Il8


residents, the great heat of their climate destroyed a number of useful British sailors. 55 English exports, particularly woolen, would suffer if the Northern colonies were in-

considerably

56

jured.

The

British

West

Indies could neither

consume

all

the

New

England nor provide supplies of molasses at low rates for the Northern colonies. It was a dogsufficiently in-the-manger attitude, "to prevent their fellow-subjects re57 ceiving from others what they themselves do not furnish." In 1763 all but three per cent of Massachusetts imports of molasses came from the French West Indies; the British West produce of

7

Indies supplied barely one-tenth of the imports of Rhode Island distilling business occupied an impor-

and Massachusetts. The tant position in colonial

economy. Massachusetts had

sixty dis-

In addition, it was only tilleries in 1763, Rhode Island thirty. by this trade with the French West Indies that Rhode Island

was able to make remittances to England of 40,000 a year. "Without this trade," the colony protested, "it would have been and always will be, utterly impossible for the inhabitants of this colony to subsist themselves, or to pay for any con58 The more trade they siderable quantity of British goods." had with the foreign colonies, pleaded Golden, the greater

would be

59

consumption of British manufactures. If any argument could soften the mercantilist heart, that was the one. It was the plea of an important mercantilist, William Wood. Writing as early as 1718, he was prepared to permit the trade between the mainland and the foreign plantations in their

Indies. He argued that by this trade English manuwould be smuggled into the French islands; in return the North Americans might not get gold and silver, but they would get what was just as valuable, the products of those

the

West

factures

countries. "This

but

if

may

not perhaps be relished by our planters; it to be for their interest in particular,

they will not allow

I am sure they can't dispute its being for the interest of Great Britain in general. For by this means we render foreign colonies and plantations, to be in effect, the colonies and plantations of Great Britain." The trade would increase shipping and seamen; it

would

by

increase the supply of colonial produce for re-export

England.

One

condition only must be respected: in return

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION for their supplies, the Americans must not take foreign

1

19

manu-

factures. 60

This was a curious argument for a mercantilist and it anticipated the policy of the nineteenth century in many respects. It would have antagonized the sugar planters, but it would have retained the allegiance of the mainland. But it was rank heresy against the mercantilist faith. The friends of the mainland pleaded instead for caution. They ought not, said Ogle"to or raise one thorpe, encourage colony upon the destruction or detriment of another." 61 If the relief or encouragement the planters appeared to be an injury to the empire if it or whole, appeared that it would do more harm to other parts of the empire than good to the West Indies, the 62 Sir John Barnard warned that not relief should be refused.

asked for

by

as a

the whole

army of excise commodity essential

officers

could prevent the smuggling

to mainland prosperity. 63 Heathcote cautioned that to prohibit the trade would be to encourage the French to develop Canada. 64

of a

Parliament remained loyal to King Sugar and the West India was laid down as a fundamentall that the Islands

interest. "It

were the only usefull colonies we had and that the continent was rather a nusance." 65 The Molasses Act of 1733 was a triumph for the sugar planters. It prohibited American exports to the foreign islands, and imposed high duties on foreign sugar and molasses. It was, Pitman writes, "a challenge to the future 66 progress of the whole region from Portland to Baltimore." the to to another It was one thing, however, Act, pass thing

As James Otis boasted, not even the King of Engencamped on Boston Common at the head of 20,000 men,

enforce land,

it.

could have enforced obedience to the Act. 67 Lawlessness was erected into a cardinal virtue of American economic practice,

made a lucrative job of shutting their eyes, of opening them no further than their private interest required. As the Pennsylvania petition of 1751 put it, the customs officers

or at

least

68 The Sugar "every community may afford a few bad men." Duties Act of 1764 repeated the injunctions of the former measure; to discourage smuggling, however, the duties were lowered, but they were to be collected. The act caused, in the

I2O


words of Governor Bernard, a greater alarm in America than did the capture of Fort William Henry in I757,69 and it has been rightly said that it sciousness than the

was

a greater

blow

to rising colonial con-

Stamp Act. The North Americans began to chafe under the inconvenience of being British subjects. The

attempt to render the Act effective and stamp out smuggling directly to the American Revolution. It was this that John

led

Adams had

in

mind when he

stated that he did not

know why

the Americans "should blush to confess that molasses essential ingredient in

was an

American independence." 70

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have con." Jefferson wrote nected them with another. only part of the truth. It was economic, not political, bands that were being .

.

A

new age had begun. The year 1776 marked the Declaration of Independence and the publication of the Wealth of Nations. Far from accentuating the value of the sugar islands, American independence marked the beginning of their unindissolved.

terrupted decline, and it was a current saying at the time that the British ministry had lost not only thirteen colonies but eight islands as well.

American independence destroyed the mercantile system and discredited the old regime. Coinciding with the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, it stimulated that growing feeling of

the colonial system which Adam Smith was voicing and which rose to a veritable crescendo of denunciation at the height of the free trade era. Reared in the same disgust with

school as

Adam

Smith, Arthur Young, the champion of the

agricultural revolution in England, drew important lessons from the American revolt and called the colonies nuisances. "That

great lesson of

modern

politicks," he

wrote with

asperity, "the

independancy of North America ought to enlarge the horizon of our commercial policy." It was not that the sugar islands were not of consequence; "they have been mischievously made of great consequence: but they are not of the importance their advocates contend for." 71 falsely The sugar planters were fully aware of the implications of

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION American

secession.

The Stamp Act was

as

121

unpopular with the

was on the mainland; the stamps were publicly burnt, to the accompaniment of shouts of 72 "God only knows," wrote Pinney from Nevis as liberty. soon as hostilities broke out, "what will become of us. We must either starve or be ruined." 73 It was worse. They did both. merchants of the islands

as

it

Fifteen thousand slaves died of famine in Jamaica alone between 1780 and 1787, and American independence was the stage in the decline of the sugar colonies. After the independence of the mainland was recognized, the economic interest of the sugar planters led them to make the

first

revolutionary suggestion that the Navigation Law "must adapt itself to every material alteration of circumstances or its provisions will be no longer wise or salutary." 75 The Americans

were equally the

West

alive to this interdependence.

India Islands," wrote

ican system of commerce.

Adams,

"The commerce of part of the Amer-

"is a

neither do without us, nor without them. The Creator has placed us upon the globe in such a situation that we have occasion for each other." 76 In England Adam Smith and Pitt pleaded in vain that the old economic relations be allowed to continue. But, as Chalmers

They can

we

put it, a community of 72,000 masters and 400,000 slaves was too unimportant to permit the sacrifice of vital English interests. 77 "The Navigation Act," wrote Lord Sheffield, "the basis of our great power at sea, gave us the trade of the world. If

we

our

alter that

islands ...

Act,

we

by permitting any

state to trade

with

desert the Navigation Act, and sacrifice the

marine of England." 78 Lord North's opinion embodied the quintessence of British imperialism: "The Americans had refused to trade with Great Britain, it was but just that they be not 79 suffered to trade with any other nation."

The Americans became

foreigners, subject to all the provisions of the Navigation Laws, and the islands were deflected from their natural market in accordance with the world his-

Nova Scotia would be made into But Nova Scotia could not be built up

torical situation of that time.

another

New England.

overnight, and nothing could compensate for the loss of AmerThe demand for American products was not diminished by

ica.

122


independence, only the supply was made more difficult. The Indian islands begged for the creation of free ports, 80

West

American

supplies continued to penetrate the British islands devious routes which resulted merely in increasing the by to the British planter, while in time of war serious prices relaxations

on the prohibition of American trade had to be

permitted to relieve embarrassment and distress in the islands. In 1 796 American exports to the British West Indies were three times the figure for 1793; British exports declined by one-half. 81 In 1 80 1 American exports to the West Indies were nearly five times what they were in 1792. Five-sixths of the exports in 1819

came through Canada and the Swedish and Danish Denied the

British

West

islands.

82

Indian market, the Americans turned where the outbreak of war

increasingly to the foreign islands,

between England and France and the destruction of the French navy and marine made the United States the great carrier of French and Spanish produce. American transport of foreign West Indian produce to Europe increased from less than one million pounds of coffee and seventy-five thousand

pounds of sugar in 1791 to forty-seven million pounds of coffee and one hundred and forty-five million pounds of sugar in 1 8o6. 83 Despite the wars at the end of the eighteenth century foreign plantation

produce continued Europe.

its

competition with

British in the markets of

But the greatest disaster for the British sugar planters was that the revolt of America left them face to face with their French rivals. The superiority of the French sugar colonies was for the British planters the chief among the many ills which flew out of the Pandora's box that was the American Revolution. Between 1783 and 1789 the progress of the French sugar islands, of Saint Domingue especially, was the most amazing

phenomenon in soil was

colonial

development.

The

fertility

of the

French sugar cost one-fifth less than British, the average yield in Saint Domingue and Jamaica was five to one. 84 During the years 1771 to 1781 the plantations of the Long family in Jamaica earned on an average a profit of nine and a half per cent, the profit in 1774 being as high as sixteen 86 per cent. In 1788 the net profit in Jamaica was four per cent French

decisive.


123

compared with an average of eight to twelve per cent in 86 In 1775 Jamaica had 775 Domingue. plantations; by 1791, out of every hundred twenty-three had been sold for debt, twelve were in the hands of receivers, while seven had been abandoned; 87 and the West Indian indebted to planters, the enormous sum of could be millions, twenty challenged "on to that new any principle prove any system would involve them so deep as that on which they had hitherto proceeded." 88 Saint Domingue's exports in 1788 were double those of Jamaica; in 1789 they were valued at over one-third more than those of as

Saint

West

the British

all

before Saint

Indies combined. In the period of ten years

Negro population and total production of almost doubled. 89 All the English sugar colo-

1789 the

Domingue

boasted Hilliard d'Auberteuil, were not equal to French Saint Domingue; 90 and the British planters admitted that they

nies,

could no longer continue to "retain in the European market that ascendancy which, we now fear, is irretrievably lost to Britain?' 91 French colonial exports, over eight million pounds,

and imports, over four millions, employed 164,000 tons of shipping and 33,000 sailors; British colonial exports, five million pounds, and imports, less than two millions, employed 92 tons of 148,000 shipping and 14,000 seamen. In every respect the sugar colonies had become vastly more essential to France than they were to England. The Caribbean ceased to be a British lake when the Amertheir independence. The center of gravity in the British Empire shifted from the Caribbean Sea to the

won

ican colonies

Indian Ocean, from the West Indies to India. In 1783, momentous year, Prime Minister Pitt began to take an abnormally in the East. 03 In 1787 great interest in the British dominions Wilberforce was encouraged by Pitt to sponsor the proposal for abolition of the slave trade. 94 In the same year the East India turned its attention to the cultivation of sugar in

Company India,

95

and

in

recommended

1789 a committee of the company formally cultivation to the court of directors. 96

its

Prior to 1783 the British government was uniformly contowards the slave trade. The withdrawal of

sistent in its policy

the thirteen colonies considerably diminished the

number of


124

empire and made abolition easier than it would have been had the thirteen colonies been English when the cotton gin revivified a moribund slave economy in the South. "As long as America was our own," wrote Clarkson in 1788, "there was no chance that a minister would have attended to the groans of the sons and daughters of Africa, however he

slaves in the

might feel for their distress. From the same spot, which was once thus the means of creating an insuperable impediment to the relief of these unfortunate a people, our affection, by wonderful concatenation of events, has been taken off and a prospect presented to our view, which shows it to be a policy to

their pain." 97 old colonial system

remove

The

had been based on the idea

that,

without a monopoly of the colonial market, British manufactures would not be sold. The other aspect of the monopolistic picture, the colonial monopoly of the home market, was based on the same assumption. The old colonial system, in other words, was a denial of the principle that trade will find its natural outlets. American independence exploded these fallacies. In July 1783 an Order in Council decreed free trade between Britain and the United States. British imports from the former colonies increased fifty per cent between 1784 and 1790; when

the invention of the cotton gin entered the picture, British imports increased from nine million dollars in 1792 to nearly 98 "The commerce between the thirty-one million in i8oi. mother country and the colony," as Merivale put it in 1839,

"was but

a peddling traffic,

compared

to that vast international

intercourse, the greatest the world has ever known, which grew up between them when they had exchanged the tie of subjec99 tion for that of equality."

class

which was

These

facts impressed the capitalist

beginning to regard the

Empire from the

standpoint of profit and loss, and contributed to the success of Adam Smith's book in undermining the mercantilist philosophy.

In 1825 Huskisson, the first of the free traders, asked pointedly "whether the disseverance of the United States from the British

Empire, viewed as a mere question of commerce, has been an injury to this country? Whether their emancipation from the commercial thraldom of the colonial system has really been


125

prejudicial to the trade and industry of Great Britain? ... Is there no useful admonition to be derived from this example?" 100

There was, but Rip Van Winkle, drugged by the potion of mercantilism, had gone to sleep for a hundred years on his sugar plantation.

7-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH CAPITALISM 1783-1833

FAR FROM BEING A NATIONAL

DISASTER,

as it

was generally

regarded in England and the world at the time, American indein reality marked the end of an outworn age and the

pendence emergence of

a new. In this new age there was no room for must now trace the expansion the West Indian monopoly. of the productive forces of England, stimulated and brought to the eve of maturity by the colonial system, and see how that colonial system in the new age acted as a brake which had to be removed.

We

In June, 1783, the Prime Minister, Lord North, complimented the Quaker opponents of the slave trade on their humanity, but regretted that its abolition was an impossibility, as the trade had become necessary to almost every nation in 1 Europe. Slave traders and sugar planters rubbed their hands in glee. The West Indian colonies were still the darlings of the empire, the most precious jewels in the British diadem. But the rumblings of the inevitable storm were audible for those who had ears to hear. The year of Yorktown was the year of Watt's second patent, that for the rotary motion, which converted the steam engine into a source of motive power and

made

industrial England, in

Matthew Boulton's 126

phrase, "steam-

BRITISH CAPITALISM, 1783-1833

127

mad." 2 Rodney's victory over the French, which saved the sugar colonies, coincided with Watt's utilization of the expansive power of steam to obtain the double stroke for his pistons. The peace treaty of 1783 was being signed while Henry Cort was working on his puddling process which revolutionized the iron industry. The stage was set for that gigantic development mill

of British capitalism which upset the structure of the political in on and made 1832 country thereby possible the attack in and West Indian in monopoly general particular. monopoly

By 1833 no single British industry had achieved a complete technical revolution; the ancient types of organization survived everywhere, and not merely as fossils or curiosities. Wool was still given out to be spun, yarn to be woven, nail-rod to be made up into nails, leather to be returned as shoes. Looms were generally hand worked, wooden spinning jennies were legion, and the word "spinster" connoted a category based on production and not yet

on matrimony. 3

But if household production still survived, it had ceased to be typical. The early phase of the Industrial Revolution was tied up with water power, the later with steam power. The application of steam was, however, a gradual process. At the beginning of the nineteenth century neither universal nor extensive. in existence in the

power amounted

The

its

use in industry was number of engines

total

United Kingdom was 321, the

total horse

to 52io. 4

According to Clapham, writing in the twenties, the total horse power of Glasgow and the Clyde in 1831 would have driven one modern cruiser. 5 But, in Mantoux's words, "there was more difference between a spinning mill and a domestic workshop as they existed side by side between 1780 and 1800, than between a factory of that date and a

modern one." 6

The

cotton industry was the capitalist industry par excel1835 gave an average employment figure of 175 for all cotton mills, 125 for silk, 93 for linen, 44 for wool. The size of the average cotton mill was something unlence.

A calculation in

precedented in British economic history. Forty-three important mills in Manchester had an average labor force of 300 in 1815;


128

had risen to 40 1. 7 The

in 1832 the figure mill was set up in

1789.

first

in 1785, the first in

steam spinning Manchester in

England Between 1785 and 1800, eighty-two steam engines were

mills, fifty-five of these in Lancashire steam loom factory was built in Manchester in 1806. In 1835 there were 116,800 power looms in all Great 9 all but six in cent cotton the Britain, per industry.

constructed for cotton alone. 8

The

first

In 1785 the exports of British cotton manufactures exceeded one million pounds in value; 10 they were thirty-one million in u The cloth i83o. printed in Great Britain increased from 20 million yards in 1796 to 347 million in i83o. 12 The population 13 to employed by the industry rose from 350,000 in I788 14 There 66 in in i8o6. were Manchester cotton mills 800,000

and Salford in 1820, 96 in i832. 15 Cotton was "raising men like mushrooms." 10 Oldham in 1760 was a village of 400 inhabitants; in 1801 it had 20,000. In 1753 Bolton had a single, rough, ill17 paved street; in 1801 the population was i7,ooo. Manchester's 18 increased sixfold between and Cotton i824. 1773 population weavers and manufacturers, unrepresented in the Manchester procession of trades in 1763 on the occasion of the coronation of George III, were the most prominent feature of the coronation procession of George IV in i82o. 19 In a larger sense it was the coronation of

King Cotton. capitalist from

The Manchester

his

mountain,

like

Moses on

Pisgah, beheld the promised land. British cotton imports rose from ii million pounds in 1784^ to 283 million in i32. 21 The

New World,

thanks to Eli Whitney, had come, not for the

last

time, to the rescue of the Old. The United States supplied less than one-hundredth part of British cotton imports in the five

years 1786-17^0, three-quarters in the years 1826-1830, fourfifths in 1846-1850. The British West Indian planter, faithful to his first love, sugar, could not keep pace with Manchester's

requirements. The sugar islands provided seven-tenths of British cotton imports in 1786-1790, one-fiftieth in 1826-1830, less than

one-hundredth part in i846-i85o. 22 The West Indies had built up Manchester in the eighteenth century. But they had become a tiny speck on Manchester's limitless horizon in the year her parvenu magnates sent their

first

delegates to Westminster, and

BRITISH CAPITALISM, 1783-1833 this

was

that the

full

129

of portent for those who persisted in their delusion like those of matrimony, were indis-

bonds of empire,

soluble.

Less spectacular, perhaps, but no less significant was the progress made in the metallurgical industries, without which the reign of machinery would have been impossible. Britain's of iron increased ten times between 1788 and production pig 23

There were three times as many furnaces in operation i83o. in 1830 as in ij88. 2 * The iron sent down the Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire Canals increased two and a half times between the years 1820 and 1833; from Cyfartha the export 26 In doubled, from Dowlais it trebled during the same period. 1800 the proportion of home make to the foreign import was four to one; in 1828, fifty to one. 26 "Britain after Waterloo,"

Clapham

writes, "clanged

with iron

like a

27

smithy."

Iron smelting required coal. The coal mines worked in Northumberland and Durham almost doubled in number be-

tween 1800 and

1836, production increased

from

six million

tons in 1780 to thirty million in i836. 28 An enormous saving was effected when in 1829 the invention of the hot blast in smelting reduced the coal fuel required by more than twothirds.

29

Iron was being put to a variety of new uses pillars, rails, gas and water mains, bridges, ships. Wilkinson built a "cast iron 30 and London even chapel" for the Methodists at Bradley, experimented with iron paving. But the greatest victory was in the construction of machinery. The early textile machinery was made of wood, by the manufacturers themselves or to their order. The decade of the twenties saw the emergence of the

made with the help of other machines, and the beginning of the manufacture of interchangeable parts which was facilitated by the invention of new professional purveyor of machines

and the discovery of the technique of cutting accurate screws. In 1834 the firm of William Fairbairn offered to turn out an equipped mill for any price, trade, site or motive power. 81

tools

In

1832 the average iron master ranked, as capitalist and on equal terms with the cotton spinner. 82 In the

entrepreneur,

130


Reformed Parliament not only cotton, iron, too, was ready to discard monopoly as a suit it had outgrown. Bar iron exports more than doubled between 1815 and 1833, and in 1825 Britain permitted what turned out to be a fatal decision a partial relaxation of the ban on the export of machinery. British rails covered the railroads of France and the United States. The sugar colonies took one-tenth of British iron exports in 1815, one-thirty-third in 1833; the United States one-quarter in 1815, one-third in i833. 33

The

sugar planters,

enjoyed an unquestioned right to a box find standing room.

who had

seat,

could

for so long

now

barely

"In my humble opinion," wrote a manufacturer in 1804, "the woollen cannot too closely follow the steps of the cotton trade." 34 Imitation, however, was slow, and the persistence of the ancient forms more pronounced in the woolen industry. The flying shuttle was not in general use in the West Riding till 1800, power weaving remained experimental down to 1830. The domestic clothier was still a powerful element in woolen production, and as late as 1856 only half the number of people em-

ployed in the industry worked in factories. The average woolen or worsted mill in 1835 contained, as we have seen, only onefourth of the number of workers in cotton mills. 35 In 1817 the production of woolen pieces in the West Riding, the chief center of the industry, was six times the figure for 36 In 1800 the imports of wool were 4,600 tons; in the late I738.

they were

thirties

five times as large. 37

The

value of woolen

fabrics exported rose from four million pounds in seven million in 1 80 1. In 1802, for the first time, they

1772 to

were ex-

ceeded by the exports of cotton manufactures; in 1830 they were five million pounds, one-sixth of the value of the cotton 38

Population increased rapidly, as in the cotton centers. Leeds had a population of 17,000 on the eve of the American

exports.

Revolution, seven times as

many

in 1831. Halifax

more than

population between 1760 and 1831; Bradford's increased two and a half times between 1801 and 1831; Hudders-

doubled

its

doubled. During these thirty years the population of the whole West Riding rose from 564,000 to 98o,ooo. 39

field's


13!

Up to 1815 Britain depended for her supplies of wool chiefly on Spain, Portugal and Germany. Captain John Macarthur, on his way to New South Wales, bought some merino sheep at the Cape. In 1806 the first shipment of Australian wool, 246 pounds, reached England. Twenty-four years later, the import was 40 In 1828 Australian wool was described as 3,564,532 pounds. of extraordinary softness and more highly prized than any other variety, and it was predicted that in fifteen or twenty years Britain would be getting from Australia as much of the

finer lia

wool

as she

enjoyed

needed. 41

The

prediction was justified. Austra-

in the nineteenth century in regard to wool "someto the kind of monopoly," as Merivale put

thing approaching it,

"which Mexico enjoyed,

in the days of her prosperity, in the

42 production of the precious metals." In the new anti-imperialist world which began in the forties, emphasis shifted, where empire had to be maintained, from islands to continents, from

tropical to temperate climates, settlements of whites.

from

plantations of blacks to

mechanized might was making the whole world her footstool. She was clothing the world, exporting men and machines, and had become the world's banker. With the exception of India and Singapore the key to the China trade acquired in 1819, the British Empire was a geographical expression. "It would not be worth my while," wrote Boulton in 1769 of his Britain's

steam engines, "to make for three counties only, but I find it 43 Britvery well worth my while to make for all the world."

was thinking

world terms. "Between 1815 and 1830," writes Leland Jenks, "at least fifty million pounds had been invested more or less permanently in the securities of the most stable European governments, more than twenty million had been invested in one form or another in Latin America, and five or six millions had very quietly found 44 But no one would advance their way to the United States." a shilling on West Indian plantations. 45 Between 1820 and 1830 over one-third of United States exports went to Britain, and the United States took one-sixth of which constituted over two-fifths of her total British exports,

ish capital, like British production,

in

132

CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY 46

imports. ish

by

In 1821 the United States took one-seventh of Brit-

exports, in 1832 one-ninth; the exports increased in value one-tenth. 47 British purchases of Southern cotton stimulated

the expansion of the cotton kingdom; private and state-owned banks in the South sought loans in London. 48

The

revolutions in Latin America opened up a wide vista to once the barriers of Spanish mercantilism had

British trade,

been broken down, while Britain's ancient alliance with Portugal gave her a privileged position in Brazil. "The nail is driven," wrote Canning in exultation, "Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly she is English." 49 Brazil took one-twentieth of total British exports in 1821, one-twelfth 50 in 1832; the exports increased two and a half times. Foreign colonies in North and South America, which accounted for one-thirteenth of the total British export trade in 1821, took

more than one-seventh

in 1832; the exports trebled in value 51 these The new Latin American governments during years. found willing lenders in English financial circles. "The more a country borrowed," says Jenks, "the better its credit, it

seemed." 52 Liverpool forgot Jamaica, Grenada and Barbados; it traded and thought now in terms of Valparaiso, Antofagasta, Callao and Guayaquil. In 1821 British exports to the world amounted to forty-three million pounds; in 1832 they were sixty-five million, an increase of one-half. 53 In both years Europe took nearly half of the 54 total. The East Indies and China took one-twelfth in 1821, 55 one-tenth in 1832; the exports increased by three-quarters. What, then, of the British West Indies? Exports to all the islands declined by one-fifth, to Jamaica by one-third. In 1821

West Indies took one-ninth of the total, in 1832 oneseventeenth; in 1821 Jamaica took one-thirteenth, in 1831 one56 The British West Indies were thus becoming inthirty-third. the British

creasingly negligible to British capitalism, and this was of profound importance to an age in which the doctrine of increasing returns was finding its way into the body of economic thought. As Burn writes: "judged by the standards of economic imperialism, the British West India colonies, a considerable success

about 1750, were a failure eighty years

later." 67


133

In 1825, moreover, the Navigation Laws had been modified, and the colonies were given permission to trade directly with

any part of the world. The first salient in the monopolistic front had been driven. It was enlarged in the same year, when the sugar of Mauritius, an Eastern possession acquired in 1815, was admitted on the same footing as British West Indian sugar. The colonial monopoly of the home market remained. This was vital to the West Indian. As far as the British capitalist was concerned, no special legislation was required to make the West Indian sugar planter buy goods which the whole world was buying because they were cheapest and best. If Manchester still thrived on "shirts for black men," the British West Indies had no monopoly of blacks, and the larger slave populations of the United States and Brazil offered attractive markets. The West Indian planter did not pay a farthing more than his Brazilian rival for calicoes. Of what use, then, asked Manchester in wrath, was the system of monopoly to the British manufacturer? 58 Its original purpose was now, as Merivale put it, "pursued by means of sacrifices on our part, made absolutely without any consideration from theirs". 59 If, to alter somewhat the words of a

modern

writer, the British

West

Indies in 1832 were, socially,

an inferno; they were, economically, what was anachronism. 60

much

worse, an

its course. It was necessary only to give economic new situation. The agitato the political expression tion for the Reform Bill was most powerful in the industrial

Mercantilism had run

centers and their commercial

satellites.

In this political struggle

Indian slave owners were vitally interested. "God forbid," said Lord Wynford, "that there should be anything like a forcing of the master to abandon his property in the slave! the

West

Once adopt that principle and there was an end 61 West Indian slavery depended upon erty."

to

all

the

proprotten

boroughs, and Cobbett realized only belatedly that "the fruit of the labour of these slaves has long been converted into the means of making us slaves at home." 62

When the

the

London

Reform Bill was rejected by the House of Lords, reformist press appeared in black-edged editions,

134


and nightly Nottingham

in every Castle,

church in the land the

owned by

the

bells

were rung.

Duke of Newcastle,

prince of

rotten-borough-owners, was burned to the ground by an angry crowd. Bristol's representative, who had opposed Reform in the House of Commons, was in danger of his life. The town hall was sacked, the jails and bishop's palace burned. Attwood formed the Political Union in Birmingham and threatened revolution. The tricolor was raised at Bethnal Green, London; revolutionary manifestoes appeared and placards were displayed bearing the inscription, "no taxes paid here." The Common Council called upon the House of Commons not to pass to the budget until the Reform Bill had become law. The Royal Family were revolucaricatured and insulted and advised to leave London. "to a run the banks: on stop the tionary device was proposed the around Revolution was for Duke (Wellington), gold."

A

go

corner. 63

The opponents of the measure, however, backed down after the King's reluctant promise to create sufficient new^ peers, and the Reform Bill became law. The political structure of England was brought into accord with the economic revolution which had taken place. In the new Parliament the capitalists, their needs and aspirations were paramount. Once the colonial trade had meant everything. In the new capitalist society the colonies had little place. "The exportation of a piece of British broadcloth," wrote Eden in 1802, "is more beneficial to us than the re-exportation of a quantity of Bengal muslin or of West India coffee of equal value." 64 In 1832 an official of the East India Company explained to a parliamentary committee that woolens

were exported to China, even when the market was not good, as a matter of tradition and duty: "it was considered a moral 65 Trade by "moral obligation" was one of the obligation." deadly

sins in the

gospel according to Manchester.

8

.

THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER

WAS THIS TREMENDOUS INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION that the West Indian monopolists had to face. They had the advantages of prestige, custom, their great contributions to British economy can see in the past, and a strongly entrenched position. not could the that were that doomed, Lilliputians today they

IT

We

hold down Gulliver nor their barbs hurt him. Lecturing to Oxford undergraduates in 1839, Merivale warned that "the rapid that tide of sublunary events is carrying us inevitably past point at which the maintenance of colonial systems and navigation laws was practicable, whether it were desirable or not.

We

are borne helplessly along with the current; we may struggle and protest, and marvel why the barriers which ancient fore-

thought had raised against the stream now bend like reeds before its violence, but we cannot change our destiny. The mo1 ." The nopoly of the West Indian islands cannot stand. as all acted and West Indians, however, could not see this .

.

vested interests do. They put up a desperate fight, "struggling by the aid of their accumulated wealth against the encroaching

2 blind to all considerations and conseprinciple of decay," the maintenance of their diseased system. quences except

The

on the West Indians was more than an attack on was an attack on monopoly. Their opponents were

attack

slavery. It

not only the humanitarians but the capitalists. The reason for the attack was not only that the West Indian economic system was vicious but that it was also so unprofitable that for this reason alone

its

destruction

was 135

inevitable. 3

The

agent for

136


Jamaica complained in 1827 that "the cause of the colonies altogether, but more especially that part of it which touches upon property in slaves, is so unattractive to florid orators and so un-

we have and must have very little 4 from protection Parliamentary speaking." Hibbert was only half right. If West Indian was detestable, West Indian slavery was and the united odium of both was monopoly unpopular, more than the colonies could bear. 5 The attack falls into three phases: the attack on the slave trade, the attack on slavery, the attack on the preferential sugar duties. The slave trade was abolished in 1807, slavery in 1833, popular with the public, that

the sugar preference in 1846. The three events are inseparable. The very vested interests which had been built up by the slave

system ians, in

turned and destroyed that system. The humanitarattacking the system in its weakest and most indefensible

now

spoke a language that the masses could understand. They could never have succeeded a hundred years before when every important capitalist interest was on the side of the colonial spot,

to climb," sang Wordsworth in would never have been reached but for the defection of the capitalists from the ranks of the slave-

system. "It was an arduous praise of Clarkson. The top

hill

owners and slave traders. The West Indians, pampered and petted and spoiled for a century and a half, made the mistake of elevating into a law of nature what was actually only a law of mercantilism. They thought themselves indispensable and carried over to an age of anti-imperialism the lessons they had been taught in an age of commercial imperialism. When, to their surprise, the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith turned could turn only to the invisible hand of against them, they God.6 The rise and fall of mercantilism is the rise and fall of slavery.

A.

PROTECTION OR LAISSEZ FAIRE?

Queen Victoria once sent a famous message to two African "England has become great and happy by the knowl-

chiefs:

capitalist,

God

and Jesus Christ." 7 To the Manchester "Jesus Christ was Free Trade, and Free Trade was

edge of the true 8 Jesus Christ."


137

Corn was the king of monopolies, Sugar was his queen. attack on the preferential sugar duties of the West Indies was a part of that general philosophy which in 1812 destroyed the East India Company 's monopoly and in 1 846 the Corn Laws of England. The Anti-Corn Law League, said its treasurer, was "established on the same righteous principle as the Anti-Slavery Society. The object of that society was to obtain the free right If

The

for the Negroes to possess their own flesh and blood the object of this was to obtain the free right of the people to ex-

could be got for it." 9 In the delirium of free trade sentiments the brunt of the advance

change their labor for

as

much food

as

on the anti-monopolistic front had to be borne by the West Indian monopoly which was not only iniquitous but expensive.

The advocates of East India sugar persistently attacked the West Indian monopoly. They called the islands "sterile rocks," whose insatiable calls for money represented "an eternal sponge on the capitals of this country, both national and commercial." Even before the end of the eighteenth century Britain was

"ripe for an abolition of monopolies." A general hardship could not be inflicted on the community at large for the sake of affording a partial and unreasonable benefit to a small number

of

its

members. 10

The

East Indian opposition was more virulent in the eighteen

wanted, at least so they alleged, no exclusive favor, preference or protection. All they asked for was equality with the West Indies. 11 Were the West Indians entitled to the

twenties.

They

enjoyment of the monopoly merely because they had enjoyed it for a length of time? "It would be to contend, that because a great

many

people

who

used to be employed in the manu-

facture of cotton, or other articles, by hand, are thrown out of employment by the invention, of machinery, a tax upon mathat chinery should therefore be levied. ... It would be to

say because the conveyance by canal has been found much more cheap and convenient than the old mode of conveyance by

wagon, a tax should therefore be

The

claim of the

West

Indians that

12

upon canal conveyance." they were entitled to a con-

laid

tinuance of protection because they had invested their capital in sugar cultivation was "a claim which might be urged with

138


13 equal force in the case of every improvident speculation." They could not depart from the ordinary principles of com-

merce

in

order to benefit the

West

Indians. 14

Hume

trusted

good sense, the honest feeling and the patriotism of the British people would never allow the continuance of such a that the

monopoly, for

all

restraints

and monopolies were bad. 15

As early as 1815 a protest was entered in the Journals of the House of Lords against the Corn Laws, threatening the very keystone of the arch of protection. In 1820 the merchants of a petition to Parliament in which it was

London presented

"freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade and the best direction to the the country." 16 In the same year Mr. capital and industry of

stated that

Finlay, of Glasgow, made an impassioned speech in support of a petition from the Chamber of Commerce of Glasgow

praying for free trade and the removal of all restrictions upon commercial imports and exports. "If it should be found," said Finlay, "that the history of our commercial policy has been a tissue of mistakes and false notions, it surely was not too much 17 All hope that the policy should be given up." the which merchants of Liverpool, promonopolies, declared hibited trade with any other country, and in particular the East India Company's monopoly, were injurious to the general in-

to express a

terests of the country.

The Corporation

of the

town declared

that British subjects possessed "an inherent right" to a free intercourse with any part of the world. Not without reason had Pitt before at a complimented Adam Smith some thirty

years dinner party, "We are all your scholars." 18 The West Indian monopoly was not only unsound in theory, In 1828 it was estimated that it it was unprofitable in practice.

more than one and a half milwas costing the country 70,000 a week and London 6,ooo. 20 England was paying for its sugar five 21 Three and a half millions more a year than the Continent. cost the British people annually

lion pounds. 19 In 1844

million

pounds of

it

British exports to the

West

Indies in 1838,

purchased less than half as much sugar and coffee as would have purchased if carried to Cuba and Brazil. they Goods to the value of one and three-quarter million pounds said Merivale,

THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER "were therefore

139

completely thrown away, without remunerais concerned, as if the vessels which con22 them had Two-fifths of the veyed perished on the voyage." as

tion, as far as Britain

price of every pound of sugar consumed in England represented the cost of production, two-fifths went in revenue to the gov23 ernment, one-fifth in tribute to the West Indian planter. It was high time to revise this "beetle-eyed" policy which bolstered up "the rotten cause" of the West Indian slaveholder. 24 Huskisson pleaded for caution. "That the West Indian

was an owner of slaves was not his fault but his misfortune; and if it was true that the production of slavery was more costly than that of free labour, that would be an additional reason for not depriving him of the advantage of his protecting 25 But the West Indians were not to misunderstand this. duty." "The time must come, and could not be far distant, when the subject would be ripe for consideration, and when it would be the imperative duty of Parliament to enter into a full investigation of all the circumstances connected with it." 26

The capitalists, eager to lower wages, advocated the policy of "the free breakfast table." It was injustice and folly to impose protective duties

on food.27 Monopoly was unsound, costly

to

28 all, and had destroyed the great colonial empires of the past. The West India interest was doomed. "There can be no pros-

perity for the West India colonies by any arrangement or juggling of duties in this house. No majorities here will give prosperity to the West Indies; and no dancing attendance at

the Colonial Office will accomplish any such end." 29

was compared to many monkeys in each stealing from his neighbor's pan, and each

The

pro-

tective system

different

cages,

losing as

he had stolen. 30 Ricardo advised the planters to yield ball was rolling, and nothing that they could gracefully; "the

much

as

do would suffice to stop it." 31 Time was when the leading statesmen were on the West Indian side. Now Palmerston lined up with the opponents of the planters. The word "protection" should be erased from 32 every commercial dictionary, as "a principle of fatal injury to the inimical to the country and prosperity of every country to 33 be whose affairs it may applied."


140

The

protectionists

were on the

side of the

West

Indians.

The

landed aristocracy of the corn bushels joined hands with the landed aristocracy of the sugar hogsheads. Peel, free trader in cotton and silk, was protectionist in corn and sugar. The West Indian cause was ably championed by Bentinck, Stanley and Disraeli. If the West Indian interest was made, as Disraeli 34 criticized, "the harridan of party/' in so it. The debates on the

he too was instrumental

making repeal of the corn laws and the equalization of the sugar duties gave him an audience for his matchless oratory and mordant wit, but it is doubtful whether any serious personal convictions or economic philosophy motivated his diatribes. For when the West Indians, after 1846, were trying to postpone the evil day of actual enforcement of the principle of free trade in sugar, Disraeli, too, turned against them. "After the immense revolution that has been carried into effect, we cannot cling to the rags and tatters of a protective system"; 35 and in Sybil he wrote with detachment that in a commercial country like England every half century developed some new source of public wealth and brought into public notice some new and powerful class the Levant merchant, the West Indian planter, the East Indian nabob. 36 Mercantilism was not only dead but damned.

The West

Indians tried to stem the free trade torrent.

The

for a mutual colonial system was "an implicit compact 37 It was theirs, not of they claimed, grace but of monopoly." of the home market was their exclusive possession right. Their for the restrictions imposed on them by the colonial just reward 38 At other times they were not indisposed to plead for system. charity. The superior advantages of their rivals made competi.

.

.

tion impossible and the protecting duty indispensable to their India they pointed to the cheapness preservation. In the case of

of labor, the abundance of food and unlimited extent of the soil, capable of irrigation and intersected with navigable

richest

39

In the case of Brazil they blamed the with facility which the Brazilians could acquire laborers for their fertile soil. Whatever the state of these colonies their refrain was always the same protection. "Ruin" was ever the first word in their rivers.


141

vocabulary a word used to designate "not the poverty of the people, not the want of food or raiment, not even the absence of riches or luxury, but simply the decrease of sugar cultivation." 40 Where they had, as slaveowners before 1833, de-

manded protection

against the free-grown sugar of India, now, employers of free labor after 1833, they demanded it against the slave-grown sugar of Brazil and Cuba. Where formerly slaves, now they had extenuated the evils of sugar cultivation as

by

As

owners they had apologised for the evils of slavery; as employers of free men they exalted the blessings of freedom. Inconsistent in all things, they were yet consistent in one the maintenance of their monopoly. To the very end the West Indians continued to suffer from their myopia and to demand a seventeenth century position in they exaggerated those

evils.

slave

a nineteenth century empire. Read their manifestoes, pamphlets and speeches instead of Saint Domingue there is India or Mauritius or Brazil or Cuba. The dates have changed, freedom has replaced slavery. But their claims are the same, their fallacies identical.

in

They keep

order to redress those

"crying out for more monopoly,

evils

which monopoly

itself

in-

42 They are greeted with sneers and contempt but heed. Occasionally they talk free trade, as when a West

flicted." 41

pay no

Indian, opposing the renewal of the charter of the West India lectured Parliament on "the impolicy as well

Dock Company,

this, such once injurious to commerce and to the revenue of the country." 43 In general, however, they remain oblivious of the new order and the beam in their own

as injustice

of continuing, in an enlightened age as

monopolies, which were

at

eyes.

Protection and Labor

they had been fuse

it

were their slogans in 1846 as was simply justice. 44 To reThe protecting duty was necessary to these

in 1746. Protection

was un-English. 45

free labor. 46 Sugar cultivation resafeguard the experiment of indentured us Africans, indentured East quires labor. Give

Indians, convicts,

now

that

you have emancipated

and made them lazy; and some,

in desperation,

the Negroes

even advocated

the renewal of the slave trade. 47

Their outstanding champion was Gladstone. But Gladstone


142

was more than well,

who

a

never

West

Indian; he

lost sight

of the

was an imperial statesman

wood

as

With all and he had much of

for the trees.

the casuistry and eloquence at his disposal Gladstone tried to justify the West Indian

monopoly on was protection for free-grown sugar against slave-grown sugar. But he was forced to admit that the distinction was not so clear that it could be drawn with uniform and absolute precision. 48 Nor could he ignore the fact that the West Indian claim for protection was weakened after 1836 when the protecting duty was extended to East Indian sugar which could plead no such difficulties and disadvantages as both

the ground that

faced the

West

it

Indians. 49

And

Gladstone

knew

that the course

had been run. Protection could not be permanent, and even if continued for twenty years, would not bring West Indian 50 cultivation to a sound and healthy state.

B.

THE GROWTH OF ANTI-IMPERIALISM

The

colonial system was the spinal cord of the commercial In the era of free trade the capitalism of the mercantile epoch. industrial capitalists

wanted no colonies

at

all,

least

of

all

the

West Indies. The trend

dated back, as we have seen, to the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Its development paralleled the de-

velopment of the free trade movement. The whole world now became a British colony and the West Indies were doomed. The leader of the movement was Cobden. Cobden referred approvingly to Adam Smith's chapters in his "immortal work" on the expense of colonies. 51 To him the colonial question was a pecuniary question. 52 The colonies were expensive encumbrances,

making dazzling appeals

to the

passions of the people,

serving only as "gorgeous and ponderous appendages to swell our ostensible grandeur, but, in reality, to complicate and magnify our government expenditure, without improving our balance of trade." He could see nothing but a "monstrous impolicy" in "sacrificing our trade with a new continent, of almost boundless extent of rich territory, in favour of a few small islands, with comparatively exhausted soils." 53 In 1852

THE NEW INDUSTRIAL ORDER the British declared

Cobden

protested.

143

war on Burma and annexed Lower Burma.

He

wrote an

article entitled

"How wars

are

got up in India," suggesting that Britain ought "to advertise in the Times for a governor-general who can collect a debt of a thousand pounds without annexing a territory which will be ruinous to our finances." 54

To

Molesworth, one of the outstanding colonial reformers, policy was motivated by "an insane desire of worthless empire," as on the frontier of the Cape Colony in South Africa, where "the loss of one axe and two goats Britain's colonial

.

.

.

has cost this country a couple of millions sterling." Australia was a collection of "communities, the offspring of convict emi-

New

Zealand was a constant headache with its "imgration." becile governors, discreditable functionaries, and unnecessary

wars with the natives." South Africa was "a huge worthless and costly empire, extending over nearly 300,000 square miles, and barren plains, chiefly rugged mountains, and arid deserts, without water, without herbage, without navigable rivers, without harbours, in short, without everything except the elements of great and increasing expense to this country." In charge of this diverse and heterogeneous collection of colonies was the Colonial Secretary, "traversing and retraversing, in his imagination, the terraqueous globe

flying

from the Arctic

to the

Antarctic pole hurrying from the snows of North America to the burning regions of the Tropics rushing across from the fertile islands

of the

Africa and Australia save the

was

pire lonial

West like

Indies to the arid deserts of South

nothing on earth, or 55

The

in

romance,

cost of protecting this Wandering Jew." one-third of Britain's export trade to the colonies.

emCo-

independence was cheaper. The colonies should be freed from the "ever-changing, frequently well-intentioned, but in-

weak and ignorant despotism" of the Colonial Office. 50 Hume, another radical politician, joined in the attack on "Mr. Mother Country." Remove the iron chains which fettered the best exertions of the colonies, 57 let them manage their own

variably

affairs instead of being kept in leading strings and subjected to the fluctuating management of Downing Street. 58 The Colonial Office "is" a nuisance and should be locked up. 59


144

Trusteeship was out of fashion. Roebuck, a free-lance Radiopposed as cant the humanitarian refusal to surrender the

cal,

colonies to local self-government. History taught that the savage must disappear in the face of the relentless advance of a

superior race; justice and humanity must yield to the iron law of an unjust necessity. 60 James Stephen, the famous Permanent

Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, never wavered in his determination not to lay down the "wretched burdens which in an evil hour we assumed." But the like Taylor, capitalists, also of the Colonial Office, could see in the colonies nothing but "furious assemblies, foolish governors, missionaries and 61 slaves," which, in the words of Merivale, were to be retained for the mere "pleasure of governing them." 62 Nothing was true

but what went to

but what went to

West Indian condemnation, nothing was just West Indian ruin. 63 It seemed to the desperate

planters as if a coalition had been colonies. 64 The assemblies of Jamaica

on

strike

in

1838 and

formed to destroy the and British Guiana went

1840 and refused to vote supplies. Doodle" to "God save the

"Yankee

Jamaica preferred 65 Queen." Who cared? Members of Parliament were prepared to

barter

the 66

pensation.

Roebuck,

West

Indies

to

America for a

slight

com-

"Jamaica to the bottom of the sea," thundered "and all the Antilles after it." These "barren

colonies" had been a source of nothing but war and expendi67 They had ever been the "most fatal appendages" of

ture.

the British empire, and if they were to be blotted out from the face of the earth Britain would lose not "one jot of her strength, one

penny of her wealth, one instrument of her

88

power."

was an epidemic. Even Disraeli, the arch imperialist of was infected. In 846 the "forlorn Antilles" were still to him "a fragment, but a fragment which I value, of the colonial system of England." 69 Six years later Canada had become a diplomatic embarrassment, and the wretched colonies a "damnosa hereditas," millstones round Britain's neck. 70 In nine cases out of ten, according to Gladstone, it was impossible to secure parliamentary attention to colonial concerns and in the tenth case it was only obtained by the casual operations of It

later decades,

1


145

71

The age of empire was dead; that of free traders, economists, and calculators had succeeded, and the glory of the party

spirit.

West

was extinguished for ever. Only another thirty however, the tune would change. But the West Indian Humpty Dumpty had had a great fall, and all the King's horses and all the King's men could not put Dumpty Indies

years,

Humpty

together again.

C.

THE GROWTH OF WORLD SUGAR PRODUCTION

The strength of the British sugar islands before 1783 lay in the fact that as sugar producers they had few competitors. In so far as they could, they would permit none. They resisted the attempt to introduce the cultivation of sugar (and cotton) into Sierra

Leone on the ground that

it

would be

a

precedent

72 to "foreign nations, who have as yet no colonies anywhere," and might prove detrimental to those who possessed West In-

dian colonies; 73 just as a century previously they had opposed the cultivation of indigo in Africa. 74 Their chief competitors in the sugar trade were Brazil and the French islands, Cuba be-

by the extreme exclusiveness of Spanish mercanThis situation was radically altered when Saint Domingue forged ahead in the years immediately following the secession of the mainland colonies.

ing hampered tilism.

The

cultivation of Barbados and Jamaica had transferred the sugar trade of Europe from .Portugal to England. The progress of Saint Domingue gave control of the European sugar market

Between 1715 and 1789 French imports from the colonies multiplied eleven times, French colonial products re75 In 1789 two-thirds of French exexported abroad ten times.

to France.

ports to the Baltic, over one-third of the exports to the Levant, It was "by it, and by it alone, that she

were colonial produce.

turned the balance of the trade with

all

the world to a favour-

able result." 76 It was the old law of slave production at work. Saint Domingue was larger than any British colony, its soil was more fertile and less exhausted, hence its costs of production were lower. This difference in costs of production became an object


146

of particular inquiry with the Privy Council Committee of 1788. From the standpoint of the ^British Prime Minister, William

was the decisive factor. The age of the British sugar was over. The West Indian system was unprofitable, and the slave trade on which it rested, "instead of being very advantageous to Great Britain ... is the most destructive that can well be imagined to her interests." 77 For a Prime Minister whose father had been consistently on the West Indian side of the fence, and whose predecessor a mere ten years previously had blandly turned down a petition for abolition, this was a momentous conversion. Pitt turned to India. Pitt's plan was twofold: to recapture the European market with the aid of sugar from India, 78 and to secure an international abolition of the slave trade 79 which would ruin Saint

Pitt, this

islands

Domingue.

not international abolition, then British abolition.

If

The French were

so dependent on British slave traders that even a unilateral abolition by England would seriously dislocate the economy of the French colonies. Pitt's plan failed, for two reasons. The importation of East India sugar, on the scale planned, was impossible owing to the high duties imposed on all sugar not the produce of the British

West

Indies.

80

Lord Hawkesbury,

for the

West

Indian

monop-

opposed the alteration of the existing law "in favour of a monopolising company" which was exceeding the bounds of olists,

charter.

its

He was

81

But Hawkesbury was more than a West Indian. touch with British commerce and industry,

in close

especially Liverpool.

He

therefore recommended, instead, the

foreign sugar provided it was done in British for and refining and re-export. "The commerce and ships solely will be more diminished, and the commerce of France shipping and shipping of Great Britain more augmented, than by any 82 single measure that has been pursued for the last century."

importation of

all

this very simple regulation Britain would recover the sugar trade she had enjoyed from 1660 to 1713 but which thereafter she lost to France. 83

By

Secondly, the French, Dutch and Spaniards refused, with called thirty years later "sheer perverse-

what Lord Liverpool ness,"

84

to abolish the slave trade. 85 It

was not

difficult to see


147

the political motives behind Pitt's cloak of humanitarianism. Gaston-Martin, the well-known French historian of the slave trade and the Caribbean colonies, accuses Pitt of aiming by u propaganda to free the slaves, in the name no doubt of humanity, this

but also to ruin French commerce," and concludes that in philanthropic propaganda there were economic motives

which explain the

liberality

with which Britain put funds

at

the disposal of the French abolitionists, and the way in which France was swamped with translations of the anti-slavery

works of the admitted: is

British abolitionist, Clarkson. 86

As Ramsay had

"We may confidently conclude that the African trade

more confined

in

that of late years

it

its

utility

than

has contributed

is

generally imagined and to the aggrandisement

more

of our rivals than of our national wealth." 87

At

this juncture the French Revolution came to the aid of Fearful that the idealism of the revolutionary movement would destroy the slave trade and slavery, the French planters Pitt.

of Saint

Domingue

in 1791 offered the island to

were soon followed by those of the Windward cepted the offer,

when war broke

88

England,

Islands.

8"

and

Pitt ac-

out with France in 1793.

was sent unsuccessfully to capture the precious colony, first from the French, then from the Negroes. It was not, Parliament was assured, "a war for riches or local aggrandisement but a war for security." 90 The allied cause in Europe was weakened in the interests of British im"The secret of England's impotence for the first six perialism.

Expedition after expedition

years of the war," writes Fortescue, historian of the British "may be said to lie in the two fatal words, St. Do-

army, 91 Britain lost thousands of men and spent thousands of mingo." pounds in the attempt to capture Saint Domingue. She failed, but the world's sugar bowl was destroyed in the process and French colonial superiority smashed forever. "For this," writes Fortescue, "England's soldiers had been sacrificed, her treasure her arm for squandered, her influence weakened,

six fateful

92

and paralysed." years fettered, numbed This is of more than academic interest. Pitt could not have had Saint Domingue and abolition slave imports a year, Saint

as well.

Without

Domingue might

as

its

40,000 well have been


148

bottom of the sea. The very acceptance of the island logically the end of Pitt's interest in abolition. Naturally he did not say so. He had already committed himself too far in

at the

meant

He continued to speak in favor of even while abolition, giving every practical encouragement to the slave trade. But it was not the old Pitt of 1789-1791, the the eyes of the public.

Pitt of Latin tags, brilliant

ism.

and the St.

oratory and infectious humanitarianin the debates in Parliament

The change can be followed in

Wilberforce's diary. In 1792 Wilberforce's diary struck ominous note: "Pitt threw out against slave motion on

first

Domingo

account." 93 Thereafter

Pitt's

support of Wilber-

became nothing short of perfunctory. On one occasion he supported the West Indians, on another he put off the motion, on another he "stood stiffly" by Wilber94 Under Pitt's adforce, on yet another he simply stayed away. ministration the British slave trade alone more than doubled, 95 and Britain conquered two more sugar colonies, Trinidad and British Guiana. As the abolitionist Stephen wrote with bitterness: "Mr. Pitt, unhappily for himself, his country and mankind,

force's annual motions

not zealous enough in the cause of the negroes, to contend them as decisively as he ought, in the cabinet any more than in parliament." 98 is

for

Liberal historians plead Pitt's fear of Jacobinism. The real is more simple. It can be taken as axiomatic that no man

reason

occupying so important

a position as

Prime Minister of Eng-

land would have taken so important a step as abolishing the Prime Minister slave trade purely for humanitarian reasons.

A

were poand only secondarily personal. He was interested in the sugar trade. Either he must ruin Saint Domingue by flooding Europe with cheaper Indian sugar or by abolishing the slave trade; or he must get Saint Domingue for himself. If he could is

more than

a

man, he

is

a statesman. Pitt's reasons

litical

get Saint Domingue, the balance in the Caribbean would be restored. Saint Domingue would be "a noble compensation" for the loss of America, and "a glorious addition to the dominion, 97 It would give navigation, trade and manufactures of Britain." Britain a

monopoly of sugar, indigo, cotton and coffee: "This would give such aid and force to industry as

island, for ages,


149

would be most happily felt in every part of the kingdom." Followed by an offensive and defensive alliance between Britain and Spain, "such friendship for ages might preclude France and America from the New World, and effectually secure the 08 invaluable possessions of But if Pitt captured Saint Spain." Domingue, the slave trade must continue. When Saint Domingue was lost to France, the slave trade became merely a humanitarian question. The destruction of Saint Domingue meant the end of the French sugar trade. Not all the decrees of consuls, black or white, wrote Eden with complacency, could fill up the gaps in the population of the island." But the ruin of Saint

Domingue

did not

mean

the salvation of the British

West

Indies.

Two new

enemies appeared on the scene. Cuba forged ahead to left in

fill

the

the world market

gap by the disappearance of Saint defeated in his Domingue. Bonaparte, attempts to recapture the colony and determined to conquer England by strangulafirst impetus to beet sugar, and the began. Whilst, under the American flag, Cuban and other neutral sugar still found a market in Europe, lost

tion of her trade, gave the war of the two sugars

West Indian surpluses piled up in England. Bankruptwere the order of the day. Between 1799 and 1807, 65 plantations in Jamaica were abandoned, 32 were sold for debts, and in 807 suits were pending against 5 others. Debt, disease and death were the only topics of conversation in the island. 100 A parliamentary committee set up in 1807 discovered that the British West Indian planter was producing at a loss. In 1800 his was 2 /2 profit per cent, in 1807 nothing. In 1787 the planter British cies

1

1 1

l

got i9/6d profit per hundredweight; in 1799, io/9d; in 1803, i8/6d; in 1805, i2/-; in 1806, nothing. The committee attributed 101 the main evil to the unfavorable state of the In foreign market. 1806 the surplus of sugar in amounted to six thousand England tons. 102 Production had to be curtailed. To restrict production, the slave trade must be abolished. The "saturated" colonies

needed only seven thousand slaves a year. 103 It was the new colonies, crying out for labor, full of possibilities, that had to be restrained, and they were abolition. permanently crippled

by

That

explains the support of the abolition bill

by

so

many West

150


Indian planters of the older islands. Ellis had stated categorically in 1 804 that the slave trade should be continued, but only to the older colonies. 104 It was the same old conflict between "saturated planters" and "planters on the make." The war and Bonaparte's continental blockade made abolition

imperative if the older colonies were to survive. "Are they not now/' asked Prime Minister Grenville, "distressed by the accumulation of produce on their hands, for which they cannot find a market; and will it not therefore be adding to their distress, and leading the planters on to their ruin, if you suffer the continuation of fresh importations?" 105 Wilberforce rejoiced: West Indian distress could not be imputed to abolition. 106 Actually, abolition was the direct result of that distress. If abolition of the slave trade

problems,

it

was only

a

was the solution of the

temporary

planter's solution. For, as Merivale

argued soundly, without imports to replace their slaves, the West Indies, and especially the newer colonies, could not hope still fiercer competition of the nineteenth century. was rather a loss than a without the trade slave "Slavery 3 156-157148.

Donnan, op.

149.

Stewart-Browne, op.

150.

Donnan,

op.

cit., I,

cit., II,

237. cit.,

52-53.

610-611.

151. Ibid., II, 609. 152. H. Scrivenor, A Comprehensive History of the Iron Trade (London, 1841), 344-346, 347-355. The percentages have been computed

from

tables given.

CHAPTER 4 1.

2.

Adam Smith, op. R. Cumberland,

tion) ,

Act

I,

Scene

cit.,

158.

The West

III.

A

Indian:

A Comedy

brief notice of the play

is

(London, 1775

edi-

given in Sypher, op.

ch. y 239.

William Beckford, Feb. 8, 1747. Indian Absentee Planter as a British Colonial Type" (Proceedings of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, 1927), 113.

V,

3.

Stock, op.

4.

F.

5.

Whitworth, Works of Davenant,

W.

cit.,

259.

Pitman, "The

West

II, 7.

NOTES TO PAGES 86-90

232

6. Cumberland, op. cit., Act I, Scene V. Quoted West Indian Absentee Planter 124. 7. Pitman, The West Indian Absentee Planter .

.

also in Pitman,

The

.,

.

.

125.

.,

8.

Merivale, op. cit., 82-83. 9. L. J. Ragatz, Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 17501833 (London, n.d), 8-20; Pitman, The West Indian Absentee Planter . . ., 117-121. 10. R. M. Howard (ed.), Records and Letters of the Family of the Longs of Longville, Jamaica, and Hampton Lodge, Surrey (London, *9*5) I 11-12; Cundall, The Governors of Jamaica in the Seventeenth

Century,

26.

11. J. Britton,

Graphical and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey, and Genealogical Notices of the Beckford

Wiltshire, with Heraldical

Family (London, 1823),

25-26.

12. Ibid., 26-28, 35, 39.

13.

H.

of C. Sess. Pap.,

15,160.2.9 14. J.

Vol. 48.

The

exact

Murch, Memoir of Robert Hibbert, Esquire

15, 18-19, 97i 99*

15.

1837-38,

amount was

(pp. 20-21, 64-65).

(Bath, 1874), 5-6,

104-105.

Broodbank, op. cit., I, 102-103; A. Beaven, The Aldermen of the London (London, 1908-1913), II, 203.

City of

16. H. of C. Sess. Pap., 1837-38, Vol. 48. The precise figure was 121.16.0 (pp. 20, 22,46, 52,67, 79). 17. See inside cover page of the first issue of the Hibbert Journal.

31,-

The

family mansion, in Duke Street, Kingston, Jamaica, was erected by Thomas Hibbert who arrived in the island in 1734. Called at first "Hibbert's House," it served for some time as the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and was popularly known as Headquarters House. It later housed the Colonial Secretary's office and the Legislative Council Chamber. See Papers relating to the Preservation of Historic Sites and Ancient Monuments and Buildings in the West

Indian Colonies, Cd. 6428 (His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1912), 1

8.

Howard,

op.

cit., I,

13.

67, 71.

19. Ibid., I, 177.

20.

C.

De

Thierry, "Distinguished

Empire (Oct., 1912), 831. 21. Anonymous, Fortunes made 119, 122-124, 130, 134;

Bourne, op.

West

Indians in England," United

in Business cit., II,

(London, 1884),

II,

117-

303.

22. Correspondence between John Gladstone, M.P. and James Cropper, on the present state of Slavery in the British West Indies and in the United States of America, and on the Importation of Sugar from the

British Settlements in India (Liverpool, 1824). 23. H. of C. Sess. Pap., 1837-38, Vol. 48. The exact

(pp. 23, 58, 120-121). 24.

Harlow, Christopher Codrington,

210, 242.

sum was

85,606.0.2


233

25. A. Warner, Sir Thomas Warner, Pioneer of the West Indies (London, 1933), 119-123, 126, 132. 26. Edwards, op. cit., I, Introduction, p. ix. 27. Maclnnes, op. cit.j 308-310. 28. C. Wright and C. E.'Fayle, A History of Lloyd's, from the Founding

House

of Lloyd's Coffee 29.

Eyre-Todd,

30.

L.

J.

1763-1833

Ragatz,

(New

33.

to the Present

cit., Ill,

The

Day (London,

1928), 286.

151-152.

Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean,

York, 1928),

51.

Duke of Clarence, July 5, 1799. ., 50. Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class Botsford, op. cit., 148; A. Ponsonby, English Diaries (London, 1923),

31. Par/. Hist.) 32.

op.

XXXIV,

1102.

.

.

284. 34.

Maclnnes, op.

cit.j

236.

36.

Bready, op. cit., 157. G. W. Dasent, Annals of an Eventful Life (London, 1870),

37.

Sypher, op.

35.

cit.,

I,

9-10.

255.

L. B. Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George (London, 1929), I, 210. 39. L. M. Penson, The Colonial Agents of the British West Indies (London, 1924), 185-187. 40. A. S. Turberville, English Men and Manners in the Eighteenth 38.

III

Century (Oxford, 1926),

134.

Lecky, op. cit., 1, 251, quoting Bolingbroke. 42. Cumberland, op. cit., Act I, Scene V. Also quoted in Pitman, The West Indian Absentee Planter ., 124. 43. J. Larimer, Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol, 41.

.

.

1887), 137-138. 44. Recollections of

the

West

Old

Indian's rival,

Liverpool, 76-82. Significant of the new trend, who was to play a prominent Indian slavery and monopoly, was supported

William Ewart,

part in destroying West among others by such names as Brancker and Earle, whose connections with slavery and the slave trade have already been noted. John Bolton

15,391.17.11 for 289 slaves in British Guiana. H. of C. Sess. Pap., 1837-8, Vol. 48 (page 131). In 1798 Bolton had six ships which sailed to

received

Africa and transported 2,534 slaves. Donnan, op. 45. Penson, op. cit., 176.

cit., II,

642-644.

46. Enfield, op. cit., 92. 47. C.

De

Thierry, "Colonials

at

Westminster," United Empire,

(Jan.,

1912), 80. 48.

Beaven, op.

cit., II,

139.

51.

Reid and Hicks, op. cit., 57. Fortunes made in Business, II, 127, 129-131. Hansard, Third Series, LXXVIII, 469. John Bright, March

52.

De

49. 50.

Thierry, "Colonials at Westminster," 80.

7, 1845.


234 53.

Hansard, Third

54.

H. of C.

XVIII, in.

Series,

Sess. Pap.,

4,866.19.11 (page 19). 55. Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class 56.

De

May

.

.

.,

30, 1833.

The compensation

1837-8, Vol. 48.

paid was

53.

Thierry, "Colonials at Westminister," 80.

57.

Hansard, Third

58.

H.

Series,

X,

1238.

March 7, 1832. The sum

of C. Sess. Pap., 1837-8, Vol. 48.

paid

was

12,281.5.10

(pages 24, 53).

CO.

59.

60.

1

37/1 oo. Balcarres to Portland, Sept. 16, 1798. Report of the Proceedings of the

Anonymous,

A

Committee of

Sugar Refiners for the purpose of effecting a reduction in the high prices of sugar, by lowering the bounty of refined sugar exported, and correcting the evils of the West India monopoly (London, 1792), 34. 61. Anonymous, A Merchant to his Friend on the Continent: Letters Concerning the Slave Trade (Liverpool, n.d.). To Lord Hawkesbury, "as a patron to the trade of this country in general, and a favorer of that, the subject of these letters."

Liverpool Papers, Add.

62.

MSS.

38223,

ff.

170,

and

175. Sept. 8,

12,

1788. 63. Ibid.,

f.

64,

Add. MSS. f.

10, 1796;

bury, July

Hawkesbury

38231, 60,

f.

Thomas Naylor, Mayor,

59.

Minutes of the

to Naylor, July

Common

to

Hawkes-

Council, July

6,

1796;

16, 1706.

Macaulay described him as "a noisy, purse-proud, demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest of the newspapers." Ibid. To Horace Walpole he was "a noisy vapouring fool." The Letters of Horace Walpole, V, 248. Walpole to Earl of Stratford, July 9, 1770. Beckford's Latin scholarship is illustrated by his famous "omnium meum mecum porto." Beaven, op. cit., II, 211. This was only to be expected from a product of a society which talked only of planting and to which Dryden was nothing but a name. Steen, op. cit., 430, 433. 65. Guide to the Guildhall of the City of London (London, 1927), 64.

Bourne, op.

II,

cit.,

135 n.

illiterate

58-59. 66. 67.

Beaven, op. cit., II, 139. R. Pares, War and Trade in the

West

Indies, 1739-1763

(Oxford,

1936), 509. 68. E.

J.

Stapleton

Canning (London, fearful question.

.

(ed.),

1887), .

.

I,

There

Some

Official

Correspondence of George

To

Liverpool, Jan. 9, 1824. "This most are knots which can not be suddenly dis-

134.

Care should be taken not to conentangled, and must not be cut. what is morally true with what is historically false. found cannot legislate in this House as if we were legislating for a new world." .

.

.

Hansard,

.

.

.

.

New

Series, IX, 275, 278, 282.

May

.

.

We

15, 1823.

Correspondence and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur, Duke of Wellington (London, 1867-1880), V, 603. Memorandum 69.

Despatches,

for Sir George Murray,

May

16, 1829.


235

Huskisson Papers (British Museum), Add. MSS. 38745, fT. 182-183. Joseph Sandars, Jan. 22, 1824. See also Ibid., f. 81: "It appears to me

70.

To

not immaterial that the President of the Board of Trade and member for Liverpool should get out as soon as he can." Huskisson to Canning

on

membership in the Anti-Slavery Society, Nov. 2, 1823. Add. MSS. 38752, f. 26. Huskisson to Horton, Nov. 7, 1827. For Canning's letter of resignation from the Board of Governors of the African Institution, see Ibid., Add. MSS. 38745, ff. 60-70. Oct. 26, 1823. 72. Ibid., Add. MSS. 38752, ff. 26-27. 73. W. Smart, Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century (London, his

71. Ibid.,

1910-1917), 74.

II,

545.

The Right

in the

West

India Merchants to a

Double Monopoly of

the Sugar-Market of Great Britain, and the Expedience of

examined (London, 75. Stock, op. 76.

Cundall,

all

Monopolies,

n.d.), 59-60.

V,

cit.,

261. Feb. 8, 1747.

The Governors

of Jamaica in the Seventeenth Century,

100. 77. Parl. Hist., XIII, 641.

Feb.

78. Ibid., 652, 655.

Feb.

79. Pares, op.

508-509.

80.

cit.,

Penson, op.

cit.,

13, 1744.

20, 1744.

228.

CHAPTER 1.

Hughes, op.

cit.,

2.

Ibid., 91-97,

101;

5

56-57, 217.

Grindon, op.

cit.,

42, 54, 79-82, 185-189; Botsford,

Donnan, op. cit., II, 493, 656. had four ships in the slave 3. Hughes, op. cit., 170-174. In 1799 Leyland trade, which carried 1,641 slaves. Donnan, op. cit., II, 646-649. 4. Hughes, op. cit., 74-79, 84-85, 107-108, in, 133, 138-141, 162, 165-166, 196-198, 220-221. For the Earles see Botsford, op. cit., 123; Bourne, op. cit., II, 64. In 1799 the Earles had three ships in the slave trade, which carried op.

cit.,

122;

Bourne, op.

cit., II,

78-79;

969 slaves; Ingram, in 1798, three ships, with 1,005 slaves; Bold, in 1799, two ships, with 539 slaves. Donnan, op. cit., II, 642-649. 5. Larimer, Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, 297-208, 392, 468, 507; Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century, 113, 494; Bourne, op. 6.

cit., II,

C.

1934),

1

W. III,

8.

Barclay,

A

History of the Barclay Family (London, 1924-

235, 242-243, 246-247, 249;

Gary, op.

cit.,

194, 221, 455, 506;

134-135; Botsford, op. cit., 120-121, 295. Another prominent banking name in London associated with the slave trade was

Bourne, op.

cit.,

Baring. Gary, op. 7.

in

II,

cit.,

Eyre-Todd, op.

506. cit., Ill,

151, 218-220, 245, 372; J.

Glasgow during the olden time (Glasgow,

Buchanan, Banking

1862), 5-6, 17, 23-26, 30-34.


236

Lord, Capital and Steam-Power, 1750-1850 (London, 1923),

8. J.

113.

9. Ibid.j 192.

Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38227, rT. 43, 50, 140, 141. Sept. 7 and Nov. 15 and 17, 1791. n. Namier, "Antony Bacon .," 25-27, 32, 39, 41, 43; Ashton, op. cit., 52, 136, 241-242; J. H. Clapham, An Economic History of Modern 10.

14,

.

.

'

Britain,

The Early Railway Age,

12.

cit., II,

Beaven, op. Ashton, op.

13

14. F.

Martin,

cit.,

1820-1850 (Cambridge, 1930), 187-188.

131.

157.

The History

of Lloyd's

and of Marine Insurance

in

Great

Britain (London, 1876), 62. 15. Wright and Fayle, op. cit., 19, 91, 151, 212, 218-219, 243, 293, 327. Other prominent names associated with Lloyd's were Baring, and the abolitionists, Richard Thornton and Zachary Macaulay. Ibid., 196-197. 16. H. of C. Sess. Pap., 1837-8, Vol. 15,095.4.4 48. The exact figure was

(pp. 12, 165, 169).

Clapham, op.

17. 1

Wright and

8.

19.

Callender, op.

20.

Dodd,

op.

Economy and

cit.,

286.

Fayle, op. cit.,

240-241.

91, 125, 204-208, 219.

cit., 37,

its

cit.,

78-79.

place in the formation of

See also C. R. Fay, Imperial

Economic Doctrine (Oxford,

Huskisson to 21. Huskisson Papers, Add. MSS. 38745, ff. 182-183. Sandars, Jan. 22, 1824, agreeing with his withdrawal. See also J. Francis, History of the English Railway; its Social Relations and Revelations,

A

1820-1845 (London, 1851), 1,93. 22. See Hansard, VI, 919, where Gascoyne opposed the prohibition of the British slave trade to new colonies conquered during the Napoleonic as a violation of faith. April 25, 1806. For Gladstone, see Francis, 123; F. S. Williams, Our Iron Roads: their history, construction)

wars op.

and op.

cit., I,

(London, 1852), 323-324, Hughes, op. cit., 197-198.

social influences cit., I,

123;

337.

For Moss,

see Francis,

V. Sommerfield, English Railways, their beginnings, development (London, 1937), 34-38; Latimer, Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century, m, 189-190. Three of the directors were connected with the West Indies, and subscribed 51,800 out of 217,500. 23.

and

personalities

24.

Lord, op.

cit.,

166.

Scrivenor, op. cit., 86-87. In 1740: 1788: 68,300 tons in 85 furnaces. 25.

26.

Wheeler, op.

cit.,

from

pounds; exports: 27. W. T. Jackman,

England 28.

170. Imports:

23,253 to

cit.,

57;

from

1,985,868 to 6,700,000

355,060.

The Development of II, 514 n. From

(Cambridge, 1916),

Butterworth, op.

80,000.

148,

17,350 tons in 89 furnaces; in

Transportation in

Modern

19,837 to 27,246.

Wheeler, op.

cit. y

171.

From

20,000 to

NOTES TO PAGES Io6-II2 29.

Lord, op.

30.

Mantoux, op.

31.

Adam

237

143.

cit.,

cit.,

Smith, op.

102-103. cit.,

549, 555, 558-559, 567, 573, 576, 579, 581, 595,

625-626. 32. Ibid., 577-

CHAPTER 1.

Johnson, op. cit., I, 118-119. table of exports given.

The

6

proportions have been computed

from the

Pitman, Development of the British West Indies, Preface, p. vii. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, F, 382. Governor Willoughby, May 12, 1666; Ibid., V, 414. John Reid to Secretary Arlington, 2.

3.

1666 (?) 4. 5.

Postlethwayt, Universal Dictionary . ., II, 767. Callender, op. cit., 96, quoting American Husbandry (1775). .

6. Ibid., 96.

Cambridge History of the British Empire, I, 572. I, 72. Andrews, The Colonial Period 9. Cambridge History of the British Empire, I, 564. 10. Andrews, The Colonial Period ., I, 497-409. 7.

8.

11.

.

.

.,

.

.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,

I,

420-430. Sept. 26, 1655.

Governor Winthrop opposed emigration as "displeasing" to God. R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop (Boston, 1864-1867), II, 248.

Whitworth, Works of Davenant, II, 9, 21, 22. H. A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries, the History Economy (New Haven, 1940), 78. 12.

13.

V,

14.

Stock, op.

15.

Callender, op. cit., 78. P. W. Bid well and J.

1

6.

cit.,

Northern United 17. 1

Harlow,

8. Ibid.,

19.

20.

259.

William Beckford, Feb. I.

8,

1747.

Falconer, History of Agrictdture in the

States, 1620-1820

A History

of an International

(New

of Barbados

.

.

.,

York, 1941),

43.

272.

268.

Andrews, The Colonial Period Harlow, A History of Barbados

.

.

.

IV, 347.

., .

.,

287.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, VII, 4. John Style to Secretary Morrice, Jan. 14, 1669. 22. Ibid., X, 297. "Narrative and Disposition of Capt. Breedon concerning New England," Oct. 17, 1678. 21.

23.

Stock, op.

24.

A. M. Whitson, "The Outlook of the Continental American Colo-

nies

on the

cit., II,

British

269. Jan. 27, 1698.

West

(March, 1930), 61-63.

Indies, 1760-1775," Political Science Quarterly

NOTES TO PAGES 112-Iiy

238

25. Innis, op. cit., 134-135. 26.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, V, 167. Renatus Enys to i, 1663: "The sworn enemies of the colony are .; they use the utmost means to disparage the

Secretary Bennet, Nov. the Dons of Barbadoes

.

.

country." 27. Ibid.,

ward

XI, 431. Governor

May

Islands,

Lynch

to

Governor Stapleton of the Lee-

16, 1683.

XVII, 482-485. April 29, 1772. The question is discussed Anglo-Dutch Commerce and Finance in the Eighteenth

28. Part. Hist.,

in C. Wilson,

Century (Cambridge, 1941), 182-183. 29. Pares, op. cit., 220. 30.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial

V,

Series,

Governor Wil-

167.

loughby, Nov. 4, 1663. 31. Pitman, Development of the British West Indies, 70-71; Stock, op. cit., IV, 97. 32.

Bennett, op.

cit.,

22-25.

., I, 494; Postlcthwayt, Great Britain's Commercial Interest ., I, 869; An Account of the late Postlcthwayt, Universal Dictionary from the Sugar Refiners, 4; Stock, op. cit., IV, 101. application .

33.

.

.

.

.

.

.

34. Pares, op. cit., 180.

Almon, Anecdotes of the Life of the Right Honourable William Earl of Chatham, and of the principal events of his time (London,

35. J.

Pitt,

1797), III, 222, 225. The quotations came from a contemporary pamphlet, Letter from a Gentleman in Guadeloupe to his Friend in London (1760), is reproduced by Almon. Whitworth, State of the Trade of Great Britain 85-86. The figures for Canada and Florida are as follows:

which

.

36.

British Imports

Canada

.

.,

For Grenada and Dominica,

II,

pp.

British Exports to

from

2383679

^448563 i 79993

Florida

Part

37568

see Chapter

III,

note

16,

supra.

37. Pares, op. cit., 219. 38.

Almon,

op.

cit., Ill,

225.

39. Pares, op. cit., 224.

40. Stock, op. cit., 41.

Whitson, op.

42. Stock, op. cit.,

43.

V,

cit.,

461.

March

7, 1750.

73.

V, 537

n.

Anonymous, The Importance

of

the Sugar Colonies

to

Great

Britain Stated (London, 1730,7. 44. Stock, op. cit.,

45. Ibid.,

V,

IV,

136.

Thomas Winnington,

Feb. 23, 1731.

462.

46. Postlethwayt, Universal Dictionary thwayt, Great Britain's Commercial Interest .

.

I,

.,

.

.

.,

871-872, I,

II,

769; Postle-

482, 485, 489-490, 493.

NOTES TO PAGES 47.

Almon,

op.

America, Aug.

Anonymous,

51.

239

I

North

V,

478. April 16, 1751. Letter to a Noble Peer, relating to the Bill in

A

favour of the Sugar-Planters (London, 1733), 50.

2

23, 1760.

48. Stock, op. cit., 49.

7-!

Circular Letter to the Governors of

16.

cit., Ill,

I I

18.

Whitson, op. cit., 76. A. M. Schlesinger, The Colonial Merchants and the American

Revolution, 1763-1776 (New York, 1918), 42-43. 52. Some Considerations Humbly offered .

53.

A

54.

Whitson, op.

55.

Stock, op.

Noble Peer

Letter to a

56. Ibid.,

.

.,

.

.,

n.

20.

70.

cit.,

V,

477. April IV, 161 n, 162 n, 163 n. cit.,

.

16, 1751.

V, 482. April 19, 1751. Donnan, op. cit., Ill, 203-205. Jan. 24, 1764. W. S. McClellan, Smuggling in the American Colonies

57. Ibid., 58. 59.

break of the Revolution 60.

Wood,

op.

61. Stock, op.

IV,

62. Ibid.,

IV, 125. Jan. 63. Ibid.,IV, 185. Feb. 64. Ibid., IV, 139. Feb. 65. E.

York, 1912),

at the

Out-

37.

136-141.

cit.,

cit.,

(New 143.

Feb.

23, 1731.

28, 1731.

21, 1732. 23, 1731.

Century English Merchants, Micajah Perry," Journal of Economic and Business History (Nov., 1931), 06. Perry to Cadwallader Golden of New York. 66.

Donnan,

"Eighteenth

West Indies, 272. Rum, Romance and Rebellion (New York,

Pitman, Development of the British

67. C.

W.

Taussig,

1928),

3968. Stock, op. cit.,

V,

477. April 16, 1751.

69. Callender, op. cit., 133. 70. Innis, op. cit., 212.

Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture (London), IX, 1788, 95-96; X, 1788, 335-362. The whole essay, on "West Indian Agriculture," should be read. 71.

72. 73.

74. 75. 76.

77.

Whitson, op. cit., 77-78. Maclnnes, op. cit., 295. Edwards, op. cit., II, 515. Whitson, op. cit., 86. ., 174. Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class G. Chalmers, Opinions on Interesting Subjects of Public .

Commercial Policy; 1

arising

.

Law and

from American Independence (London,

784), 60. 78.

., 176. Ragatz, Fall of the Planter Class . P. Nettels, The Roots of American Civilization

79. C.

1939)^55.

.

(New

York,


240

80. Petitions from the various islands that the ports should be opened were so numerous that Lord Hawkesbury was "apprehensive that every port in our West India islands will apply to be made a free port from

a sense of the great advantages to be derived therefrom." Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38228, f. 324. Feb. 1793. On Feb. 20, 1784, Governor Orde wrote from Dominica: "The people look with uncommon anxiety for the arrival of a free port act." B.T.6/I03 (Public Record Office).

W.

81.

H.

Elkins, British Policy in

its

Relation to the

Commerce and

Navigation of the U.S.A., 1*194-1807 (Oxford University D. Phil. Thesis, c. 1935), 96. Dr. Vincent Harlow, who supervised the thesis, kindly permitted me to read it. 82. Innis, op. cit., 221, 251.

T.

83.

Pitkin,

A

Statistical

View

of the

Commerce

of the United States

(Hartford, 1817), 167. 84. Report of the Committee of Privy Council, 1788, Part V, Question Evidence of Messrs. Fuller, Long and Chisholme of Jamaica.

Pitman,

85.

The

Settlement

.

.

.

of British

West

India Plantations

.

i.

.

.,

276. 86.

Report of the Committee of Privy Council,

87.

Pitman,

The Settlement

.

.

.

of British

1788. See note 84 supra.

West

India Plantations

.

.

.,

280.

XXIX, 260. Wilberforce, April 18, 1791. Klingberg, op. cit., 13-14, 103; H. Brougham, An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers (Edinburgh, 1803), I, 522. 90. Chatham Papers (Public Record Office), 0.0.8/349. West Indian Islands, Papers relating to Jamaica (1783-1804) and St. Domingo (17881800). Extracts from "Considerations on the State of St. Domingo," by 88. Parl. Hist.,

89.

Hilliard d'Auberteuil, 303. 91. Report of the Committee of Privy Council, 1788, Part V. See note 84 supra. 92.

Brougham,

op.

Pitt's,

Company:

"It has

occurred to

me

to be a very material part of the

Com-

show

that the bill-holders are willing to allow the company convenient time before they call for payment. I have in general under-

pany's case to all

539-540. Papers, G.D.8/IO2, there is this curious letter of 1783, probably to the Governor of the East India

cit., I,

Chatham dated Nov. 25,

93. In the

stood that they are inclined to do so; but it would add a great weight if a public declaration could be obtained from them as a body to that effect. For that purpose it might be desirable to convene a public meeting of them; tho' such a measure ought not undoubtedly to be proposed without a certainty of success, I could not forbear suggesting this to your I must beg the favour of you, however, not to mention the from me, and to excuse the liberty I take in troubling you."

consideration.

idea as 94.

R. Coupland, Wilberforce (Oxford, 1923), 93. Various MSS. (in the writer's possession).

95. Sugar:

Ferguson, March

25, 1787.

Adamson

to


24!

96. East India Sugar, Papers respecting the Culture and Manufacture of Sugar in British India (London, 1822), Appendix I, p. 3. 97. Clarkson, Essay on the Impolicy . ., 34. .

98. Pitkin, op. cit., 30, 200-201. Pitkin gives the figures for 1784-1790 in pounds, 1792-1801 in dollars. The proportions given in the text are based

on the tables as given in Pitkin. It seemed a more satisfactory way to show the increase of the trade than to attempt the conversion of pounds into dollars. 99. Merivale, op. cit., 230. xoo. Anonymous, The Speeches of the Right Honourable William Huskisson with a Biographical Memoir (London, 1831), II, 312. March 21, 1825.

CHAPTER 1.

Parl. Hist.,

2.

Mantoux, op.

cit.,

340.

cit.,

Chap. V.

XXIII, 1026-1027. June

7

17, 1783.

3.

Clapham, op.

4.

Lord, op.

5.

6.

Clapham, op. cit., 156. Mantoux, op. cit., 257.

7.

Clapham, op.

8.

Lord, op. cit., 174. A. Redford, The Economic History of England, 1760-1860 (London,

9.

176.

cit.,

cit.,

184-185, 196.

1931), 22. 10.

Mantoux, op.

258.

cit.,

N. S. Buck, The Development of the Organization of AngloAmerican Trade, 1800-1850 (New Haven, 1925), 166. 11.

12. Ibid., 164. 13.

Wheeler, op.

14.

Butterworth, op. cit., 112. Buck, op. cit., 169.

15. 1

6.

175.

cit.,

Mantoux, op.

cit.,

368.

The

phrase

is

Arthur Young's.

17. Ibid., 367-368. 1

8.

19.

20.

Jackman, op.

cit., II,

Butterworth, op.

Mantoux, op.

514 n.

cit.,

cit.,

From

27,246 to 163,888.

37.

258.

H. Timperley, Annals of Manchester; Biographical, Ecclesiastical, and Commercial, from the earliest period to the close of the year 1839 21.

C.

(Manchester, 1839), 89. 22. Buck, op. cit., 36 n. 23. Scrivenor, op. cit., 87 (68,300 tons in 1788); Clapham, op. (650,000-700,000 tons in 1830).

cit.,

149


242

24. Scrivenor, op. cit., 87 (85 furnaces in 1788) (250-300 furnaces in 1830). 25.

Scrivenor, op.

;

Clapham, op.

clt. y

149

123-124, 293-294.

cit.,

26.

Clapham, op. cit., 240. 27. Cambridge History of the British Empire, II, 223. The whole essay, "The Industrial Revolution and the Colonies, 1783-1822," by J. H. Clapham, should be read as an indispensable aid to an appreciation of the

West Indian monopoly. Clapham, op. cit., 431; F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England 1844 (London, 1936 edition), 13. The number of mines increased from 40 to 76.

destruction of the 28.

m

29.

Scrivenor, op.

30.

Redford, op.

31.

297.

cit.,

41-42.

cit.,

Clapham, op. cit., 152, 154; A. P. Usher, (New York, 1929), 332.

A

History of Mechanical

Inventions 32.

Clapham, op.

189.

cit.,

Scrivenor, op. cit., 421. The figures are as follows: 1815 exports, 79,596 tons; to B.W.I., 7,381; to U.S.A., 21,501; 1833 exports, 179,312 tons; to B.W.I., 5,400; to U.S.A., 62,253. 33.

34.

Mantoux, op.

cit.,

276.

35.

Clapham, op.

cit.,

144, 196;

Buck, op.

cit.,

163.

Engels, op. cit., 9. From 75,000 to 490,000 pieces. 37. Clapham, op. cit., 243, 478. 38. James, op. cit., 286; Mantoux, op. cit., 106 n.; Clapham, op. The cotton export for 1830 was 31,810,474. Buck, op. cit., 166. 36.

39.

Mantoux, op.

cit.,

40. Merivale, op. cit., 41.

369; Engels, op. 1

cit.,

249.

cit., 9.

20.

Cambridge History of the

British

Empire,

II,

231.

42. Merivale, op. cit., 121. 43.

Redford, op.

44. L.

H.

Jenks,

cit.,

45.

The Migration

of British Capital to 1875 (London,

1927), 64. 45.

Hansard,

New

Series,

XV,

385.

Lord Redesdale, April

19, 1825.

46. Jenks, op. cit., 67.

47.

Customs 8 (Public Record Office), Vols.

1821

6,422,304; 1832

14

and

35.

The

figures are:

7,017,048.

48. Jenks, op. cit., 75-76.

The Cambridge History

49.

1923), 50.

of British Foreign Policy

Canning to Granville, Dec. 17, Customs 8, Vols. 14 and 35. In 1821 II,

74.

51. Ibid., In 1821

3,239,894; in 1832

(Cambridge,

1824.

2,114,329; in 1832

5,298,596.

9,452,822.

52. Jenks, op. cit., 47.

53.

Customs

54. Ibid.,

8,

Vols. 14 and

In 1821

55. Ibid. In 1821

35.

In 1821

43,113,855; in 1832

29,908,964. 19,082,693; in 1832 6,377,507. 3,639,746; in 1832

65,025,278.

NOTES TO PAGES 132-138 56. Ibid.

1821

To

the B.W.I.: 1821

3,214,364; 1832

W.

57.

4,704,610; 1832

3,813,821.

243

To Jamaica:

2,022,435.

L. Burn, Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British

West

Indies (London, 1937), 52.

Hansard, Third Series, LXXVII, 1062. Milner Gibson, Feb.

58.

24, 1845.


Burn, op. cit., 73. Burn denies that they were an inferno. L. Mathieson, British Slavery and its Abolition, 1823-1838 (Lon-

60.

W.

61.

don, 1926), 222.

A. Prentice, History of the Anti-Corn

62.

Law League

(London, 1853),

1,563. E.

A

Halevy,

History of the English People, 1830-1841 (London,

1927), 42-43, 47, 56-58. 64. F. M. Eden, Eight Letters

on the Peace; and on the Commerce and

Manufactures of Great Britain (London, 1802), 65. Cambridge History of the British Empire,

CHAPTER 1.

Merivale, op.

2.

Ibid., 93.

cit.,

129. II,

8

238-239.

3. Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38295, f. 102. spondent to Lord Bexley, July, 1823. 4. C.O. 137/166. Hibbert to Horton, April 2,

5.

Hansard,

New

239.

Series,

XIV,

1164.

An anonymous

corre-

1827.

Lord Dudley and Ward, March

7, 1826. 6. Ibid., 7.

8.

Third

Series, HI, 354.

Mr. Robinson, March

Bready, op. cit., 308. The statement is Dr. Bowring's.

9.

10.

Prentice, op.

The Right

cit., I,

in the

The

date

11, 1831.

I

have been unable to

.

.

find.

75.

West

India Merchants

.,

17, 18-19, 26-27, 50-51,

53. 74-7511.

etc.,

Hansard, New Series, VIII, 339. Petition of merchants, shipowners, concerned in the trade to the East Indies, March 3, 1823.

12. Report of a Committee of the Liverpool East India Association, appointed to take into consideration the restrictions of the East India

Trade (Liverpool, 13. Z.

1822), 21-22.

Macaulay, East and West India Sugar; or a Refutation of the

Claims of the West India Colonists to a Protecting Duty on East India

Sugar (London, 1823), 37. East India Stock 14. Debates at the General Court of Proprietors of on the i$th and 2ist March 1823 on the East India Sugar Trade (London, 1823), 12. Mr. Tucker.


244

15. Ibid.) 40-41.

Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge,

1934), X, 771-772. Hansard, New Series, I, 424-425, 429. May 16, 1820. 1 8. Ibid., XXII, in, 1 1 8. March 23, 1812. The compliment to Pitt is in Cambridge Modern History, X, 77 1 19. W. Naish, Reasons for using East India Sugar (London, 1828), 12. 20. Hansard, Third Series, LXXV, 438. Mr. Villiers, June 10, 1844. 1

6.

17.

.

2

1

.

22.

Ibid., 444.

Merivale, op.

cit.,

225.

23. Ibid., 205. 24. J. B. Seely, A Fe<w Hints to the West Indians on their Present Claims to Exclusive Favour and Protection at the Expense of the East

India Interests (London, 1823), 89.

The Speeches

25.

27.

of ... Huskisson

May

26. Ibid., Ill, 146.

.

.

.,

198.

II,

May

22, 1823.

15, 1827.

Hansard, Third Series, LVII, 920. Villiers, April 5, 1841. Labouchere, March 12, 1841. Ibid., Third Series, LXXVII, 1056. Milner Gibson, Feb. Ibid., Third Series, LVII, 920. Villiers, April 5, 1841.

28. Ibid., 162-163. 29.

30.

31. Ibid.,

32. P. 33.

Third

Series,

Hansard, Third

34. Ibid., 35. Ibid.,

Third Third

Pitman,

36.

LXXVII,

Guedalla, Gladstone and Series,

CXI,

Series,

XCVI,

Series,

CXXIV,

The

1845.

24,

1078. Feb. 24, 1845.

Paimerston (London, 592.

May

1928), 30.

31, 1850.

123. Feb. 4, 1848.

1036.

March

Settlement ... of British

3,

1853.

West

India Plantations

.

.

.,

282-283. 37.

Penson, op.

cit.,

208.

T. Fletcher, Letters

in Vindication of the Rights of the British India Colonies (Liverpool, 1822), 27; Anonymous, Memorandum on the Relative Importance of the West and East Indies to Great Britain 38.

West

(London, 1823), 30; C.O. 137/140. Report from a Committee of the Honourable House of Assembly, appointed to inquire into various matters relative to the state of commerce and agriculture of the island; the probable effects thereon of opening the trade to the East Indies; and the operation of the present maximum on the exportation of sugar. Jamaica, 1813. 39. C.O. 137/140. Report from a Committee of the Honourable House of Assembly

Jamaica, 1813. W. P. Morrell, Select Documents on British Colonial Policy, 1830-1860 (Oxford, 1928), 414. Russell to Light, Feb. 15, 1840. .

.

.,

K. Bell and

40.

41. Merivale, op. cit., 84. 42.

Hansard, Third Series, HI, 537. Mr. Fitzgerald, March Series, XVIII, in. Henry Goulburn, May 30, 1833. Ibid., New Series, IV, 947. Marryat, Feb. 28, 1821.

18, 1831; Ibid.,

Third 43.

44. Ibid., 45. Ibid., Series,

Third Third

XCIC,

Series, C, 356. Bentinck, July 10, 1848. Series,

LXXV,

1094. Miles,

June

213. Stewart,

23, 1848.

June

3,

1844; Ibid.,

Third

NOTES TO PAGES 141-145 Third Third

46. Ibid., 47. Ibid.,

Series, Series,

LVI,

616.

XCIX,

Viscount Sandon, Feb.

1098. Miles,

June

245

12, 1841.

1848; Ibid., 1466.

23,

30, 1848. They argued that when the Africans, at the end of their contract, returned home, they would introduce civilization into Africa. Ibid., Third Series, LXXXVIII, 91. Hogg, July 27, 1846. On the

Nugent, June

request for convicts, see Ibid., Third Series,

June

LXXV,

1214.

Mr. James,

21, 1844.

Third Series, LXXVII, 1269. Feb. 26, 1845. Third Series, CXI, 581. May 31, 1850. Third Series, LXXV, 198. June 3, 1844. Third Series, CXV, 1440. April 10, 1851.

48. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 50. Ibid.,

51. Ibid.,

52. Ibid., 1443.

The

Writings of Richard Cobden (London, 1878), 12, 14. Cobden was prepared to let the United States seize Cuba. Hansard, Third Series, CXXXII, 429-430. April 4, 1854. 5.3.

Political

54. Ibid., 257.

55. Hansard, Third Series, CVI, 942, 951-952, 958. June Third Series, C, 825. July 25, 1848. 56. Ibid., Third Series, C, 831, 834, 849. July 25, 1848.

57. Ibid., 58. Ibid.,

59. Ibid.,

60. sell

W.

New Series, XXII, Third Third

855. Feb. 23, 1830.

Series, XI, 834. Series,

26, 1849; Ibid.,

XCIX,

March

875.

23, 1832.

June

19, 1848.

P. Morrell, British Colonial Policy in the

Age

of Peel and Rus-

(Oxford, 1930), 286.

61. Bell

and Morrell, op.

cit.,

Introduction, pp.

xiii,

xxiv.


Hansard, XXXIV, 1192. Barham, June 19, 1816. Addresses and Memorials to His Majesty from the House of Assembly at Jamaica, voted in the years 1821 to 1826, inclusive, and which have been presented to His Majesty by the Island Agent (London, 1828), 63.

64.

22.

65.

Hansard, Third Series, XCIX, 872. Seymer, June 19, 1848. Third Series, XCVI, 75. Robinson, Feb. 3, 1848.

66. Ibid.,

67. Ibid., 68. Ibid., 69. Ibid., 70. E. L.

Third Third Third

Series, LXIII, 1218-1219. Series,

LXXV,

462.

June

June

3,

Series, LXXXVIII, 164. July 28, 1846. Woodward, The Age of Reform, iSif-iSjo (Oxford,

351. Morrell, op. cit., 519, speaks of this as "the

though it "damnosa hereditas"

is

Disraeli's,

op.

cit.,

71. J. I,

1842.

10, 1844.

is

1938),

famous indiscretion" of

not clear just how it is indiscreet. The phrase Taylor's of the Colonial Office. Bell and Morrell,

Introduction, p. XXVI. Morley, The Life of William

Ewart Gladstone (London,

1912),

268. 72.

Penson, op.

73.

Chatham

Resolutions,

cit.,

209.

Papers, G.D. 8/352.

May

19, 1791.

West

India Planters and Merchants,


246 74.

Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, XIII, 719. Petition of

Jamaica Merchants, Oct. u, 1692. 75. A. M. Arnould, De la Balance du Commerce et des Relations Commerdales Exterieures de la France, dans Toutes les Parties du Globe, pdrticulierement a la fin du Regne de Louis XIV, et au Moment de la

Revolution 76.

(Paris, 1791),

I,

263, 326-328.

Hansard, IX, 90-91. Hibbert, March

XXIX, 1147. April 2, The Fall of the Planter

77. Parl. Hist., 78. 79.

more

12, 1807.

1792.

Class ., 211. Ragatz, See Chatham Papers, G.D. 8/102. Pitt to Eden, Dec. 7, 1787: "The I reflect on it, the more anxious and impatient I am that the busi.

.

ness should be brought as speedily as possible to a point." Pitt refused to consider temporary suspension of the trade and to compromise "the principle of humanity and justice, on which the whole rests." The Journal

and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland (London, 1861), I, 304. Pitt to Eden, Jan. 7, 1788. Pitt thought that one good result of the new constitution in France (1788) would be that "our chance of settling something about the slave trade" would be improved. The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue Esq. preserved at mission,

London, 1892-1927),

The

Dropmore I,

(Historical Manuscripts

353. Pitt to Grenville,

Aug.

Com-

29, 1788.

Fall of the Planter Class ..., 213-214.

80.

Ragatz,

81.

Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38409,

ff.

151, 155.

Written probably

in 1789. 82. Ibid.,

ff.

147-148.

Add. MSS.

38349, f. 393. Written probably after 1791. Correspondence Despatches and other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh (London, 1848-1853), XI, 41. Liverpool to Castlereagh, Oct. 2, 1815. See too Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38578, f. 28. Liverpool to Castle83. Ibid.,

84.

reagh, is

',

Nov.

20, 1818.

Coming from

a

West

Indian slaveowner, the phrase

amusing. 85. See Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38224,

Ambassador

in Paris,

f.

118.

Lord Dorset,

wrote to Lord Hawkesbury on

May

7,

British

1789, that

the flattering references to British humanitarianism "seem'd only meant to compliment us and to keep us quiet and in good humour." Sir James Harris, from Holland, wrote that the principles of humanity were not likely to

/.

make much impression on

the

Dutch merchants and

that

it

to obtain their acquiescence. The Manuscripts of B. Fortescue ., Ill, 442-443. Harris to Grenville, Jan. 4, 1788. 86. Gaston-Martin, La Doctrine Coloniale de la France en 1789

would be

difficult .

(Cahiers de

la

.

Revolution Fransaise, No.

3,

Bordeaux, 1935),

25, 39.

Ramsay, An Inqidry into the Effects of Putting a Stop to the African Slave Trade (London, 1784), 24. 88. Chatham Papers, G.D. 8/349. West Indian Islands, Papers relating to Jamaica and St. Domingo. The offer was made by De Cadusey, Presi87. J.

dent of the Island Assembly, on Oct.

29, 1791.

He

stated that necessity


247

justified a step which would normally be treason, for obvious reasons the offer could not be "official," and begged Pitt in the name of policy as well

as of humanity to accept "the expression of the general will." The offer was not unexpected in England. On May 13, 1791, the British Ambassador in Paris reported that the French colonists were talking of "throwing themselves into the arms of England." P.O. 27/36. (Public Record Office).

Gower

to Grenville.

P.O. 27/40. De Curt to Hawkesbury, Dec. 18, 1792. De Curt begged to be considered in all respects as an Englishman, and later formally 89.

asked for protection "in the name of humanity and English loyalty." Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38228, f. 197. Jan. 3, 1793. 90. Part. Hist., XXXII, 752. Dundas, Feb. 18, 1796. 91. J.

W.

Fortescue,

1930), IV, Part

I,

A

History of the British

Army

(London, 1899-

325.

92. Ibid., 565.

Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, I, 341. II, 147, 286; A. M. Wilberforce,

93.

94. Ibid.,

William Wilberforce (London, 1897),

31. Pitt

The

Private Papers of

to Wilberforce,

May

31,

1802.

Klingberg, op. cit., 116, quoting Lecky. Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, II, 225. Stephen to Wilberforce,

95. 96.

July, 1797.

Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38227, f. 5. Aug. 7, 1791. An anonywriter from Jamaica to one Mr. Brickwood. 98. Chatham Papers, G.D. 8/334. Miscellaneous Papers relating to France, 1784-1795. James Chalmers to Pitt, Dec. 24, 1792. 97.

mous

99.

Eden, op.

cit., 18.

Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter Class . . ., 308. 101. H. of C. Sess. Pap. Report on the Commercial State of the West India Colonies, 1807, 4-6; Hansard, IX, 98. Hibbert, March 12, 1807. 100.

102.

Hansard, VIII, 238-239. Dec.

30, 1806.

1807. The greater need of slaves in the newer colonies explains that peculiar migration from the old to the new colonies between 1807 and 1833 under the guise of "domestics" in attendance on their master. See Eric Williams, "The Intercolonial Slave Trade after its Abolition in 1807," Journal of Negro History (April, 103. Ibid., 985.

Hibbert, Feb.

23,

1942). 104.

Hansard, II, 652. June 13, 1804. Lord Sheffield replied that a breach of faith. Ibid., VII, 235. May 16, 1806.

this

would be

105. Ibid., VIII, 658-659. 106. Ibid., 107.

IX, 101.

Merivale, op.

March

Feb.

5,

1807.

12, 1807.

303, 313-317.

cit.,

., 20 (Table XVII). Ragatz, Statistics 109. Ibid., 20 (Tables XVII, XIX and XX). Antigua, 162,573 and 115,932 cwt.; Mauritius, 155,247 and 524,017 cwt.

108.

.

.


248

no. Ibid., 20 (Tables XIX and XXI). From 4,000 to 111,000 cwt. in. Customs 5 (Public Record Office), Vols. 16 and 22. Singapore's increased from 5,000 to 33,000 cwt.; Philippines' from 8,800 to 32,500; Java's

from 950 to

21,700.

de la Pezuela, Diccionario Geografico, Estadistico, Historico de hla de Cuba (Madrid, 1862), I, 59; Anuario Azucarero de Cuba

112. J. la

(Habana, 1940), 113. Customs,

from Cuba 1

14.

59.

35,500

Pitman,

From

Vols.

5,

6,

14,500 to 620,000 tons. 20 and 21. From Brazil 50,800

and 362,600 cwt.;

and 210,800 cwt.

The Settlement

.

.

.

of British

West

India Plantations

.

.

.,

262. 115. Pezuela, op. cit.,

prised 4,933 acres, Ibid. 1 1 6.

I,

59.

Alava plantation, another "monster" com-

employed 600 slaves, and produced 3,570 tons of sugar.

Hansard, Third Series, LXX, 212. Cobden, June 22, 1843. Third Series, LVII, 610. Ellenborough, March 26, 1841.

117. Ibid., 1 1

8. Ibid.,

Third

Series, II, 700. Poulett

Thomson, Feb.

21, 1831.

and Explanations submitted to the Board the Commercial, Financial and Political State of

119. Statements, Calculations

of Trade relative to the British West India Colonies, since the igth of May, 1830. (H. of C. Sess. Pap., Accounts and Papers, 1830-1831, IX, No. 120), 58. Imports into Hamburg rose from 68,798 to 75,441 boxes; into Prussia from 207,801 to 415,134. Russian imports of Cuban sugar rose from 616,542 to 935,395 poods (36 pounds), of Brazilian from 331,584 to 415,287 poods. 1 20. Hansard, Third Series, XVII, 1209, 1211-1212. May 14, 1833.

Burn, op. cit., 367 n. C.O. 295/93, n.d. The Council's petition was enclosed in Governor Grant's despatch of Aug. 29, 1832. 121.

122.

CHAPTER

9

1. H. Richard, Memoirs of Joseph Sturge (London, 1864), 84. Cropper to Sturge, Oct. 14, 1825. 2. Auckland Papers (British Museum), Add. MSS. 34427, rT. 401-402

(v).

Wilberforce to Eden, Jan. 1788.

4.

Coupland, Wilberforce, 422. Bready, op. cit., 302, 341.

5.

Prentice, op.

3.

cit., I, 3-4.

T. P. Martin, "Some International Aspects of the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1818-1823," Journal of Economic and Business History (Nov., 6.

1928), 146. 7.

8.

Hansardj Third Series, XVI, 290, March 6, 1833. Wadsworth and Mann, op. cit., 288, 289.

NOTES TO PAGES 156-161 9.

Murch,

op.

cit.,

76.

Report of the Speeches at the Great Dinner

jo.

in the Theatre,

chester, to celebrate the election of Mark Philips, Esq. C. P. Thomson (John Rylands Library), 2, 8.

Man-

and the Rt. Hon.

Hansard, Third Series, XXXIII, 472. April 29, 1836. Third Series, XL VIII, 1029. June 28, 1839. Ibid., Third Series, C, 54. Milner Gibson, July 3, 1848. Ibid., Third Series, LXXVII, 1053. Gibson, Feb. 24, 1845. Ibid., Third Series, LVI, 605. Hawes, Feb. 12, 1841. Ibid., Third Series, LXXVII, 1053. Gibson, Feb. 24, 1845;

11.

249

12. Ibid., 13. 14.

15. 16.

Third

Gibson, July

Scries, C, 54.

17. Ibid.,

XCIX,

Third

1428.

Series,

Ibid.,

1848.

3,

1144. Feb. 24, 1845; Ibid.,

LXXVII,

Third

Series,

June 30, 1848. Third Series, C,

1 8. Ibid., 324. Bentinck, July 10, 1848, quoting Bright. Bentinck emphasized the previous protection against Indian textiles.

19. Ibid.,

20. Ibid.,

21. Ibid.,

Third Series, LXXVIII, 930. March 14, Third Series, LXXVI, 37. June 27, 1844. Third Series, XCIX, 1420. June 30, 1848.

22. Ibid., 747. 23.

Eden,

June

1845.

16, 1848.

Auckland Papers, Add. MSS.

34427,

ff.

401-402 (v). Wilberforce to

Jan., 1788.

24. J. A. Langford, A Century of Birmingham Life: or a Chronicle of Local Events (Birmingham, 1870), I, 434. 25. Ashton, op. cit., 223. 26.

Langford, op.

27. Ibid., 28.

1,

cit., I,

436, 440.

437.

Dent, op.

cit.,

427.

29. Ibid. 30.

N. B. Lewis, The Abolitionist Movement

in Sheffield, 1823-1833

(Manchester, 1934), 4-5. 31. Eng. MS., 743 (John Rylands Library). Auxiliary Society for the relief of Negro Slaves, f. 12. Jan. 9, 1827; f. 15. July 10, 1827. The plea to their

townsmen

is

on

a small card, undated, in the

same

library, in

BoxV. 32. 33. 34.

Lewis, op.

cit., 6.

Hansard, Third Series, XIX, 1270. July 25, 1833. Ibid., Third Series, XVI, 288. March 6, 1833; Ibid., Third

XVIII, 911. June 35. Ibid., 36. Ibid.,

Series,

17, 1833.

Third Third

Series,

LXXV,

446-447. June 10, 1844.

Series, LXIII, 1174. J une 3

I

^4 2 -

37. Ibid., 1173.

Third

LXX, 210. June 22, 1843. T. Rogers (eds.), Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M. P> (London, 1878), 91-92. 40. J. E. Ritchie, The Life and Times of Viscount Palmerston (London, 38. Ibid.,

39. J.

Bright and

1866-1867),

II,

Series, J.

743-744.


250 41.

Hansard, Third Series, LXXVII, 1128. Feb. 24, 1845. Third Series, XCIX, 751-752. June 16, 1848. Mackenzie-Grieve, op. cit., 283. Hansard, VI, 918. April 25, 1806.

42. Ibid., 43.

44.

45. Ibid., VII, 612.

Lord Howick, June 10, 1806. Lord Howick, Feb. 23, 1807.

46. Ibid., VIII, 948. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

Jackman, op. cit., II, 515 n. Hansard, VIII, 961-962. Feb. 23, 1807. Buck, op. cit., 31-32. Hansard, New Series, XXIII, 180. March n, 1830. The Speeches of ... Huskisson I, 115. Feb. 1826. Hansard] Third Series, XIX, 793. July 17, 1833. Ibid., Third Series, XVIII, 909-910. June 17, 1833. Ibid., Third Series, XVI, 285. March 6, 1833. Ibid., Third Series, XVIII, 910. June 17, 1833. .

.

.,

Eyre-Todd, op. cit., Ill, 256, 263-264. Donnan, op. cit., II, 537 n, 564 ^565 n. 58. Hansard, Third Series, XVI, 291. March 6, 1833. In 1846 another Oswald went further: "When we wore slave-grown cotton, when we drank slave-grown coffee, and smoked slave-grown tobacco, he could not for the life of him conceive on what principle they might not also use slave-grown sugar. They must look for the amelioration of this evil to some other quarter than the Custom-House." Hansard, Third Series, LXXXVIII, 122. July 28, 1846. It would be interesting to know whether this was a member of the same family. 59. Ragatz, Statistics 9 (Table IV) 56.

57.

.

60.

.

.

.

.

.

.,

Report of the Proceedings of the CoTmnittee of Sugar Refiners,

3, 8, 15.

61. Ibid., 62.

1

8 n.

Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38227, 217. Chairman to Hawkesbury,

Jan. 23, 1792;

ff.

219-222.

Chairman to

Pitt, Jan.

12,

1792.

Indian cotton exports were 7 million pounds in 1816, 31 million in 1817, 67 million in 1818 but only 4 million in 1822. Exports from the United States were 50 million in 1816, 59 million in 1822; from Brazil 20 million in 1816 and 24 million in 1822. Customs 5, Vols. 5, 6, 7, n. But 63.

Indian cotton was "the worst in the English market; owing to the negE. Baines, History of the Cotton Manuligent cultivation and packing." facture in Great Britain (London, 1835), 308. John Bright later used to tell a story of a Lancashire prayer meeting at which the following

was offered up: "O Lord, we beseech Thee send us cotton; not Shoorat." The reference is to Surat cotton and probably has to do with the American Civil War. G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of

petition

but

O Lord,

John Bright (Boston, 1913), 318 n. 64. T. P. Martin, op. cit., 144. The phrase is M' Queen's. on the East India Sugar Trade, 19. 65. Debates .

.

.


2JI

70.

Hansard, Third Series, VII, 764. John Wood, Sept. 28, 1831. Third Series, XIX, 1165-1167. William Clay, July 24, 1833. Ibid., Third Series, VII, 764. Sept. 28, 1831. Ibid., Third Series, VIII, 362. Oct. 7, 1831. The Speeches of Huskisson ., III, 454. May 25, 1829.

71.

Hansard, Third

66.

67. Ibid., 68. 69.

\

.

.

72. Ibid.,

Third

Third

Series,

.

101.

LVIII,

XVIII,

XVII,

Series,

.

.

Series,

Ewart,

75.

May

June 11, 1833. William Ewart, April

589.

3,

1833; /*W.,

10, 1841.

Third Series, LVI, 608. B. Hawes, Feb. 12, 1841. Third Series, LXXXVIII, 517. Aug. 10, 1846. Ramsay, MS. Vol., f. 64. "An Address on the proposed

73. Ibid., 74. Ibid.,

75.

bill

for the

Abolition of the Slave Trade."

Auckland Papers, Add. MSS.

76.

Nov.

34227,

f.

123.

Wilberforce to Eden,

23, 1787.

77. Parl. Hist.,

XXIX,

270. April 18, 1791.

78. Ibid., 322.

Hansard, VIII, 948-949. Feb. 23, 1807. Proceedings of the Committee for Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1787-1819 (British Museum), Add. MSS. 21255, ^ I0 ( y )- April 14, 1789. 79.

80.

81. J.

1788),

Newton, Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade (Liverpool,

8.

Ramsay, MS. Vol.,

82.

f.

64.

Hansard, VIII, 947-948. Lord Howick, Feb. 23, 1807. Report of a Committee of the Liverpool East India Association

83.

84.

.

.

.,

56.

The Speeches

85.

of ...

Huskiswn

.

.

.,

Ill,

442.

May

12, 1829,

Hansard, Third Series, VII, 755. Sept. 28, 1831. Ibid., Third Series, XVI, 881-882. March 20, 1833.

86. 87.

88. Ibid., 290.

March

Third

6, 1833.

XIX, 1169. July 24, 1833. Lindsay, op. cit., Ill, 85-86. 91. Bell and Morrell, op. cit., Introduction, p. xli. 89. Ibid.,

Series,

90.

CHAPTER 1.

10

Hansard, Third Series, XCIX, 1223. G. Thompson, June 26, 1848. a prominent abolitionist speaker. Ibid., Third Series, LXXV, 170. Lord John Russell, June 3, 1844. Despatches . of Wellington, I, 329. Canning to Wellington, Sept.

Thompson was 2. 3.

.

.

30, 1822.

Wellington to Canning, Oct. 28, 1822. Correspondence of Canning, I, 62. Memorandum for the Cabinet,

4. Ibid., I, 453. 5.

Nov.

.

15, 1822.

.

.


252 6.

Hansard, Third

Series,

7.

Despatches

of Wellington,

.

.

.

XCVI,

1096. Hutt, Feb. 22, 1848. 329.

I,

Canning to Wellington, Sept.

30, 1822.

Correspondence ... of Canning,

8.

Nov.

R.

9.

62.

I,

Memorandum

for the Cabinet,

15, 1822. I.

and

Wilberforce, The Correspondence of William WilberII, 466. Oct. 24, 1822.

S.

force (London, 1840), 10.

Despatches

11.

Hansard,

1815. 12.

and

For

.

.

.

of Wellington,

I,

474-475. Oct. 31, 1822.

XXX,

657-658. April 18, 1815; Ibid., XXXI, 174. the Barings and Latin America, see Jenks, op. cit., 48.

Hansard, XXXI. See pages 557, 606, 850-851, 1064. June

May i,

5,

5,

16,

30, 1815.

13. Ibid.,

New Series, XI,

14. Ibid.,

1475-1477. June 23, 1824.

15. Ibid.,

New Series, XXV, 398. June

16. Ibid., 405.

1345.

June

15, 1824.

15, 1830.

General Gascoyne, June

15, 1830; Ibid.,

Gascoyne, Feb. 23, 1829. of Castlereagh, X, 17. Correspondence

New

Series,

XX,

495.

.

.

.

112. Castlereagh to Liverpool,

Sept. 9, 1814. 1

8.

Hansard, Third Series, LIX, 609. Brougham, Sept. 20, 1841. Third Series, XCVI, 1101-1102. Jackson, Feb. 22, 1848. Ibid., Third Series, CII, 1084. Bishop of Oxford, Feb. 22, 1849.

19. Ibid.,

20.

21. Ibid.,

22. Ibid.,

Third Third

1198. Cardwell,

Series,

XCVI,

Series,

XCVIII,

May

1095.

Quoted by Hutt, Feb.

1168. Palmerston,

May

17,

22, 1848.

1848; Ibid.,

18, 1848.

Third Series, LXV, 938, 942, 945. Aug. 2, 1842. Third Series, LXXI, 941. Aug. 18, 1843. A. K. Manchester, British Preeminence in Brazil,

23. Ibid.,

24. Ibid., 25.

Decline (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1933), 315. 26. Hansard, Third Series, LXXVII, 1066. Ewart, Feb.

LXX, 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

Its

Rise and

24, 1845; Ibid.,

June 22, 1843. Ibid., Third Series, XCIX, 1121. Hawes, June 23, 1848. Ibid., Third Series, XCVI, uoo. Hutt, Feb. 22, 1848. Ibid., Third Series, LXXXI, 1170. Hutt, June 24, 1845. Ibid., Third Series, XCIX, 748. June 16, 1848. Ibid., Third Series, CXIII, 40. July 19, 1850. Ibid., Third Series, XCVII, 988. Urquhart, March 24, 1848. 224.

33. Ibid.,

34. Ibid., 35. Ibid.,

36. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 38. Ibid.,

Third Third Third Third Third Third

Series,

LXXXI,

Series,

LXXV,

Series,

Series,

1169-1170. Hutt, June 24, 1845.

June 3, 1844. CVII, 1036. Gibson, July 27, 1849. XCVI, noi. Hutt, Feb. 22, 1848. 170. Russell,

Series,

LXXXI, 1158-1159. June XCVI, 1092, 1096. Hutt,

Series,

XCVII,

Series,

24,

1845.

Feb.

22, 1848.

39. Ibid., 1092.

40. Ibid.,

Third

986-987. Urquhart,

March

24, 1848.

NOTES TO PAGES 173-179 41. Ibid., 42. Ibid., 43. Ibid.,

44. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 46. Ibid.,

47. Ibid., 48.

W.

Third Third Third Third Third Third Third

Series, CI, 177.

Series,

LXXXI,

Urquhart, Aug. 16, 1848. 1156, 1158. Hutt, June 24, 1845.

March

Series,

XCVII,

987. Urquhart,

Series]

LXXXI,

1165, 1170. Hutt,

Series,

CIX,

1109. Hutt,

Series, CXIII, 61.

LXXXI,

Series,

March

Hutt, July 1158. Hutt,

June

253

24, 1848. 24, 1845.

19, 1850.

19, 1850.

June

24, 1845.

L. Mathieson, Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 1839-1865

(London, 1929), 90 n. The phrase is Carlyle's. 49. Hansard, Third Series, LXXVI, 947, 963. Peel, July 16, 1844. 50. Ibid., Third Series, LXXX, 482. Peel, May 16, 1845. 51. Ibid., Third Series, LXXXII, 1058-1064. July 24, 1845. 52. Ibid., Third Series, XCVI, 1125. Feb. 22, 1848. 53. Ibid., Third Series, LVIII, 648, 653. May 18, 1841. 54. Ibid., Third Series, LXXXII, 550, 552. July 15, 1845. 55. Ibid., Third Series, XCVIII, 994-996. March 24, 1848. 56. Ibid., Third Series, L, 383. Aug. 19, 1839. 57. Ibid., Third Series, LVIII, 167, 169. May 10, 1841. 58. Ibid., Third Series, CIX, 1162. March 19, 1850. ., IX, 59. The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortes cue 14-19. Edmund Lyon .

to Grenville, Jan. 60.

Hansard, XXVIII,

61. Ibid.,

.

16, 1807.

349.

Lord Holland, June

27, 1814.

XXX,

657-658. April 18, 1815. 62. Statements, Calculations and Explanations submitted to the

of Trade

.

.

.,

from Keith Douglas, Oct. 30, Memorial of Jamaica deputies, Nov. 29,

p. 84. Letter

Board

1830.

C.O. 137/186. 1832. D. Turnbull, The Jamaica Movement, for promoting the enforcement of the Slave-Trade Treaties, and the Suppression of the Slave Trade (London, 1850), 65, 94-95, 99, 120, 201, 249, 267. 63. 64.

Times, Jan.

65.

30, 1857.

66. Guedalla, op.

cit.,

64-66.

CHAPTER

II

R. Coupland, The Empire in These Days (London, 1935), 264. ProCoupland understands the history of the abolition movement as

fessor

little as his

in 1807.

force,

hero.

"How popular abolition is,

"God can

III, 295.

just

now," wrote Wilberforce

turn the hearts of men." Wilberforce, Life of Wilber-

Feb. n, 1807.

Hansard, VIII, 679-682. Feb. 6, 1807. K. Farrer (ed.), The Correspondence of Josiah Wedgwood (London, 1906), I, 215-216. June 17, 1793. 4. See Proceedings of the Committee for Abolition of the Slave 2. 3.


254

Trade, Add. MSS., 21254,

ff. 12-12 (v). Samuel Hoare to Clarkson, July hope the zeal and animation with which thou hast taken up the cause will be accompanied with temper and moderation, which alone

25, 1787: "I

can insure 5.

6.

success."

its

Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, IV, 240-241. Written in 1811. Bell and Morrell, op. cit., 376. Memorandum of Stephen, October,

1831. 7.

CO.

8.

Bell

9.

Ramsay, MS. Vol.,

295/93. Stephen to

and

Aiorrell, op. f.

Howick, Aug. 25, 1832. 420. Minute of Stephen,

cit.,

28.

Dec.

Sept. 15, 1841.

27, 1787.

10. Klingberg, op. cit., 60-6 1. Ramsay's evidence before the Privy Council in 1788 is well worth reading.

n. Sir G. Stephen, Anti-Slavery Recollections (London, 1854), 775 Richard, op. cit., 78. Stephen and Richard actually were discussing the African Institution and Anti-Slavery Society. 12.

Stephen, op.

13.

Coupland, Wilberforce, 417. Hansard, New Series, XI, 1413. Wilberforce, June

14.

79.

cit.,

15,

1824.

Coupland, Wilberforce, 406-408, 411-417. For his opposition to feminine anti-Slavery associations, see Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, V, 264-265. Wilberforce to Babington, Jan. 31, 1826. For his views on 15.

the First

Reform

see Wilberforce,

Correspondence of Wilberforce, son Samuel, March 4, 1831. 1 6. Proceedings of the Committee for Abolition of the Slave Trade, Add. MSS. 21255, f. 50 (v). Aug. 12, 1788; Add. MSS. 21256, ff. 40 (v), II,

265.

96 (v). Jan. 17.

18. 19.

Bill,

Wilberforce to

his

March

31, 1792,

29, 1797.

Hansard, IX, 143-144. March 17, 1807. Parl. Hist., XXXIII, 1119. July 5, 1799. Hansard,

New

Series,

XIX,

1469.

Quoted by Lord Seaford, June

23, 1828. 20. Ibid., 21.

New

Series, IX, 265-266.

Richard, op.

cit.,

May

15, 1823.

79.

Stephen, op. cit., 120-122. Richard, op. cit., 101-102. March 28, 1833. Abolition de UEsclavage (Paris, 1861), Introduction, 24. A. Cochin, 22.

23.

U

pp. xiv-xv. 25.

Proceedings of the Committee for Abolition of the Slave Trade,

Add. MSS,,

21256,

f.

95.

June

25, 1795.

W.

Fox, Address to the People of Great Britain on the Propriety of Abstaimng from West India Sugar and Rum (London, 1791), passim. Quaker 27. R. K. Nuermberger, The Free Produce Movement, 26.

A

Protest against Slavery (Durham,

N. C,

1943), 9-10.

(Anonymous), Remarkable Extracts and Observations on the Some Considerations on the Consumption of West India Produce (Stockton, 1792), 9. Copy in Wilberforce Museum, Hull 28.

Slave Trade with

NOTES TO PAGES 184-186 29. 30.

Naish, op.

255

cit., 3.

Wilberforce Museum. Anonymous, The Ladies Free Grown Cotton Movement (John

Undated

sheet, in

1

31.

Rylands Library) Undated. 32. Gurney to Scoble, Dec. .

5, 1840. In Wilberforce Museum. There number, D.B. 883, given with some hesitation, as the heterogeneous papers were not well arranged. 33. "The Principles, Plans, and Objects of The Hibernian Negro's Friend Society, contrasted with those of the previously existing AntiSlavery Societies, being a circular, in the form of a letter to Thomas is

a reference

London Anti-Slavery

Pringle, Esq., Secretary of the 8,

Society,"

3.

Jan.

1831 (John 34.

Aug.

Rylands Library). Hansard, Third Series, XX,

315, 323, 324.

Aug.

5,

1833; Ibid., 446.

9, 1833.

35. Ibid., 36. Ibid.,

Third Third

37. Ibid., 619. 38. Ibid.,

39. Ibid.,

Series,

XXXVIII,

1853.

Series,

LVI,

O'Connell, Feb.

Feb.

Third Third Third

218.

Hobhouse, July

10, 1837.

1841.

2,

12, 1841.

Series,

Series,

LXV, LXX,

1075. Baring,

Aug.

5,

1842.

1294. July 21, 1843.

46.

Series, LXVIII, 753. April 10, 1843. Eng. MS. 741. Clarkson to L. Townsend, Aug. 1825. Clarkson Papers (British Museum), Add. MSS. 41267 A, ff, 178-179. Debates on the East India Sugar Trade, 35. Hansard, Third Series, XXXVIII, 1853-1854. July 10, 1837. Ibid., Third Series, LXX, 1294. July 21, 1843. Bell and Morrell, op. cit., Introduction, p. xxx.

47.

East India

40. Ibid., 41. 42. 43.

44. 45.

.

.

.

Subscription Journals to

Company

800,000 additional

stock, July 1786; East India Company Stock Ledgers, 1783-1791, 17911706. These records are kept in the Bank of England Record Office,

500 and John Roehampton, London. Henry Thornton subscribed Thornton 3,000 to the stock issued in 1786. At his death John left 2,000 to each of the others, which left Henry with 3,000, Robert with 4,000 and Samuel with 3,000. 48. Debates on the expendiency of cultivating sugar in the territories of the East India 49.

Debates

.

.

(East India House, 1793).

Company .

on the East India Sugar Trade,

Fall of the Planter Class

.

.

.,

mentions

363,

this

5.

Only Ragatz, The

important

fact.

Macaulay, op. cit., 29. on the East India Sugar Trade, 36. Hume. 51. Debates Gladstone and Cropper ., 15; 52. Correspondence between F. A. Conybeare, Dingle Bank, the home of the Croppers (Cambridge, 50.

.

.

.

.

The

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

. Fall of the Planter Class ., 364. Letters William to M.P., recommending Wilberforc'e, Cropper, the encouragement of the cultivation of sugar in our dominions in the

1925), 7; Ragatz,

.

53. J.

East Indies, as the natural and certain means of effecting the total and


256

general abolition of the Slave Trade

(Liverpool,

1822), Introduction,

p. vii. 16. and Cropper Gladstone ., 54. Correspondence between Cropper replied that this connection had ceased, to which Gladstone retorted: "It would be rather a curious coincidence were we to find that this cessation was coeval with his becoming a public writer against slavery: and in that case is it not rather remarkable that he should not have been induced to turn author until his slave cotton agency had .

ceased?" Ibid.,

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

37.

Gladstone and Cropper ., 55. Correspondence between 56. J. Cropper, "Slave Labour and Free Labour." The substance of Mr. Cropper's address on Wednesday November 22 (1825) at the respect55.

.

able meeting at the King's

.

.

.

.

.

.

Head, Derby (Derby,

1825),

3.

.

John Rylands

Library. 57. J.

A

Cropper,

Letter addressed to the Liverpool Society for pro-

moting the abolition of Slavery, on the injurious effects of high prices of produce, and the beneficial effects of low prices, on the condition of slaves (Liverpool, 1823), 8-9. 58. Ibid., 22. 59. J. Cropper, Relief for West Indian distress, shewing the inefficiency of protecting duties on East India sugar, and pointing out other modes of certain relief (London, 1823), 9.

60. lbid. y 30. 61.

Conybeare, op.

62.

The Liverpool Mercury and Lancashire General

cit., 25,

56-57.

Advertiser, June

7> 1833.

63.

Coupland, The British Anti-Slavery Movement, 124; Mathieson, and Its Abolition, 125.

British Slavery 64.

65.

Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, V, Hansard, New Series, IX, 467. May

66. Ibid.,

67.

New

Series, VII, 698.

The

Coupland,

68. Klingberg, op. 69.

Burn, op.

70.

Ragatz,

71.

Hansard,

cit.,

The

May

17, 1822.

British Anti-Slavery

cit.,

180. 22, 1823.

Movement,

124.

203.

88.

Fall of the Planter Class

New

Series, IX, 349. Baring,

.

.

.,

436.

May

15,

1823.

72. Klinberg, op. cit., 146. 73. Ibid., 147-148.

74.

Wilberforce

later

admitted that "we have had the religious char-

acter of Alexander the Great represented to us ... in too favourable colours." To Lady Olivia Sparrow, May 31, 1814. In Wilberforce Museum,

D.B. 25 (60).

He

wroteâ strong letter to the Tsar on the subject. Wilber-

force, Life of Wilberforce, V, 136-137. Wilberforce to Macaulay, Nov. 20, 1822. Wilberforce regarded the Tsar's importation of Brazilian produce after his

promise to boycott

it

as "a breach of faith of

which any private


257

man who

should be guilty would forfeit for ever the character of a man of honor." Liverpool Papers, Add. MSS. 38578, ff. 31-32. Wilberforce to Liverpool, Sept. 4, 1822. 75. Correspondence of Castlereagh, XII, 4-35. Memorandum of James Stephen, Sept. 8, 1818, "relative to Africa and colonial discussions that may have place in the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle." .

.

.

Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, IV, 133. Hansard, XXVIII, 279, 284. June 27, 1814.

76. 77.

78. Ibid., 393.

June

28, 1814.

Wilberforce, Life of Wilberforce, IV, 209. Sept. 7, 1814. Despatches ... of Wellington, V, 15. Sept. 4, 1828. Hansard, Third Series, XCVI, 37. Bentinck, Feb. 3, 1848.

79. 80.

81. 82.

Pamphlets in the John Rylands Library.

83.

The

23,

Liverpool Mercury and Lancashire General Advertiser, July meeting of the Liverpool West India Association. Ibid., Aug. 24, 1832. Letter of "Another Elector" to "An Elector."

1832, reporting a

84.

85. Anonymous, The Tariff of Conscience. The Trade in Slave Produce considered and condemned (Newcastle Anti-Slavery Series, No. u, n.d.) John Rylands Library. 86. Anonymous, Conscience versus Cotton; or, the Preference of Free Labour Produce (Newcastle Anti-Slavery Series, No. 10, n.d.). .

John Rylands Library. 87. Hansard, Third Series, XIX, 1177. July 24, 88. Ibid., Third Series, VI, 1353. Sept. 12, 1831. 89. Ibid., 1355.

oo.

91. 92. 93. 94.

1833.

Hume.

Eng. MS. 415. Buxton to Mrs. Rawson, Oct. 6, 1833. Hansard, Third Series, XCIX, 1022. June 22, 1848. Eng. MS. 415. Buxton to Mrs. Rawson, Oct. 6, 1833. Gurney to Scoble, Dec. 5, 1840. Wilberforce Museum, D.B. 883. Hansard, Third Series, LXXXI, 1159. Quoted by Hutt, June 24,

1845. 95. Ibid.,

Third

Series,

CIX,

1098.

Quoted by Hutt, March

1850.

19,

In 1858, Wilberforce stated: "We had no right to put ourselves forward to the world as the suppressors of the slave trade unless we were prepared its suppression which our had made with us." Ibid., Third Series, CL, 2200. June 17, 1858. Ibid., Third Series, XCIX, 849. June 19, 1848. In 1850 Buxton called

honestly and firmly to enforce those treaties for allies

06.

for the exclusion of slave-grown sugar, though not of slave-grown cotton and tobacco, arguing that "he saw no reason why he should not oppose an evil that he could successfully oppose, because there were other evils that

it

was impossible for him to oppose."

Ibid.,

Third

Series,

CXI,

533.

May 31, 1850. In 1857, he moved an address to the Queen praying that all efforts be used to put down the Slave Trade. Ibid., Third Series, CXLVI, 1857. July 14, 1857. This change of opinion coincided with a change in the viewpoint of the

capitalists.

Hutt was chairman of

a

com-

mittee in 1849 which described the efforts to suppress the slave trade as


258

impracticable and hopeless. Another committee in 1853, of which both Hutt and Bright were members, declared that "these efforts in the cause

of humanity, continued through so many years, must be considered as honourable to the nation, and the results afforded a strong inducement to persevere until this iniquitous trade shall be entirely abolished." Mathieson, Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 133-134.

Hansard, Third

Series, CXXXIX, 116. June 26, 1855. Thtrd Series, LXXVI, 187. July 2, 1844. 99. Ibid., Third Series, CL, 2205. June 17, 1858. 100. Ibid., Third Series, LXXVII, 1290, 1292, 1300, 1302. Feb. 26, 1845. 101. Ibid., Third Series, LVIII, 193. May n, 1841. 102. Ibid., Third Series, LXXVII, 1290. Feb. 26, 1845. 103. Ibid., Thrrd Series, LXXXVIII, 4-5. July 27, 1846. This was a petition from Clarkson to the House of Lords presented by Brougham. 104. Mathieson, Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 34-35. The reference is to 4 a ton on every ship captured without slaves, 5 a "head-money" head on slaves delivered alive, 2.10.0. on those who died after capture. 105. Hansard, Third Series, XCVI, 85. Feb. 4, 1848. 106. Ibid., Third Series, L, 131. Inglis, Aug. 8, 1839. 107. Ibid., Third Series, XCIX, 1324. Inglis, June 29, 1848. 108. Ibid., Third Series, LXXXVIII, 163. Quoted by Disraeli, July 28, 97.

98. Ibid.,

1846. 109.

Merivale, op.

cit.,

uo. Hansard, Third in. Morley, op. cit., 112.

113.

303-304.

Series, I,

XCVI,

133. Feb. 4, 1848.

78.

Sypher, op. cit., 217. E. B. Dykes, The Negro in English Romantic Thought (Wash-

ington, D. C., 1942), 79-80. 114. Sypher, op. cit., 215-216; Dykes, op. 115.

Lewis, op.

1 1 6.

Ibid., 13-14.

cit.,

70.

cit., 15, 17.

T. Caryle, "The Nigger Question," in English and other Critical Essays (Everyman's Edition, London, 1925). The whole essay, written in 1849, should be read. 118. Hansard, Third Series, XCVI, 1052. Feb. 22, 1848. 117.

CHAPTER

12

i. See C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins (London, 1938) for the slave revolution in Saint Domingue. H. Aptheker, Negro Slave Revolts in the United States (New York, 1943), should also be consulted. An admirable

short summary, for the entire Western Hemisphere, is to be found in Herskovits, op. cit., 86-109. i a. C. O. 28/95. House of Assembly, Barbados, Nov. 15, 1825.

NOTES TO PAGES IpS-ZOO

259

C. O. 28/92. Report of a Debate in Council on a despatch from Lord Bathurst to Sir H. Warde, Sept. 3, 1823. Mr. Hamden, pp. 21-22. See also C. O. 295/59, where the governor of Trinidad argued that this concession 2.

would be considered an injustice by the men. Woodford to Bathurst, Aug. 6, 1823; C. O. 295/60. Mr. Burnley, one of the leading planters of Trinidad: "I confess the idea appears to me so monstrous

to the female slaves

and extraordinary that I hardly know how to approach the subject." Mr. Hamden, p. 5. 3. C. O. 28/92. Report of a Debate in Council. 4. C. O. 137/145. Shand to Bathurst, Nov. 26, 1817. 5. C. O. 137/148. Manchester to Bathurst, July 10, 1819. 6. C. O. 28/92. Mr. Hamden, p. 24. Report of a Debate in Council. 7. C. O. 295/92. Edward Jackson to Governor Grant, Dec. 31, 1831. 8. C. O. 137/156. Manchester to Bathurst, Dec. 24, 1824. 9. C. O. 137/163. Manchester to Bathurst, Nov. 13, 1826. 10. C. O. 137/154. Manchester to Bathurst, Oct. 13, 1823. 1 1. C. O. ii 1/55. D'Urban to Bathurst, July 4, 1826. 12. C. O. 295/85. Oct. 29, 1830. The following is the number of manu.

.

.

.

.

.

missions, 1825-1830:

Number

Year

Manumissions

Field

Domestic

Manumitted

Paid for

Slaves

Slaves

1825 1826

162

98

38

124

167

108

46

121

1827 1828

167 128

129

49

118

84

33

95

1829

87

15

1830

32

41 22

72 26

6

(to Oct. 29.)

C. O. 295/72. Woodford to Bathurst, Aug. 8, 1826. C. 0. 295/73. Stephen to Horton, Oct. 5, 1826. 15. C. O. 295/67. Henry Gloster, Protector of Slaves, to Governor Woodford, July 7, 1825. Fitzgerald's returns are as follows: Slave John 13.

14.

"7 stripes

Philip

considered in

all

on

that part where if the foot be hostilely applied is civilized countries an act of the vilest indignity"; Slave

"23 stripes on that part which my Lord Chesterfield strongly recommends to be the last to enter and the first to retire on all presentations at levies and to name which in the presence of ladies is considered a great breach in the laws of politeness"; Slave Simon Mind "23 stripes on that particular part of the body corporate which is rarely guilty of a crime but which pays for transgressions committed by other members." Philip

1

6.

17.

and Morrell, op. cit., p. 382. C. O. 28/09. Carrington, Agent for Barbados, to Bathurst,

Bell

1826. 18. 19.

C. O. 28/93. Warde to Bathurst, Oct. 21, 1824. C. O. 28/92. Report of a Debate in Council.

.

.

,

p. 33.

March

2,

NOTES TO PAGES 2OO-2O3

260

C. O. 137/165. Message of House of Assembly, Dec. 1827. C. O. 137/143. Oct. 31, 1815. 22. Bell and Morrell, op. cit., 405. Protest of Assembly of Jamaica, June,

20.

21.

1838.

O. 137/183. Manchester to Goderich, Nov. 13, 1832. Manchester to Goderich, Dec. 16, 1832. C. O. 137/186. Memorial of the Jamaica deputies to

23. C.

24. Ibid. 25.

Britain,

Nov.

29, 1832.

26.

Dec. 27. 28.

Dec.

C. O.

137/183. Manchester to Goderich, secret

and confidential,

16, 1832.

Hansard, XXXI, 781-782. Marry at, June 13, 1815. C. O. 137/183. Manchester to Goderich, secret and confidential, 16, 1832.

30.

C. O. 137/187. Z. Jones to Goderich, Feb. 22, 1832. C. O. 137/187. Goderich to Manchester, secret, March

31.

The

29.

32. 33.

phrase

is

5,

1832.

Canning's.

C. O. 137/154. Manchester to Bathurst, Dec. 24, 1823. C. O. 28/111. Smith to Stanley, July 13, 1833.

34. C. O. 295/92. Memorial for ourselves and in behalf of all our fellow subjects of African descent (enclosed in Governor Grant's despatch to

Goderich, March

26, 1832).

Grant to Goderich, March 26, 1832. 36. Ibid. William Clunes to Goderich, Jan. 27, 1832. 37. C. O. 28/111. Smith to Stanley, May 23, 1833. 38. C. O. 28/88. Combennere to Bathurst, Jan. 15, 1819. 39. C. O. 111/69. D'Urban to Murray, April 20, 1830. See also C. O. 295/87. Smith to Goderich from Trinidad, July 13, 1831: "The slaves have an unaccountable facility in obtaining partial, and generally distorted, information whenever a public document is about to be received which can in any way affect their condition or station." 40. C. O. 295/92. Grant to Goderich, March 26, 1832. 35. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

Gazette Extraordinary, March

25, 1832.

O. 295/93. Extract from a Trinidad paper, n.d. 43. C. O. 295/92. Grant to Howick, April 30, 1832. 44. C. O. 137/119. Coote to Castlereagh, June 27, 1807; C. O. 137/120, Edmund Lyon, Agent for Jamaica, to Castlereagh, July 17, 1807. 45. C. O. 137/142. Manchester to Bathurst, Jan. 26, 1816. 46. C. O. 137/143. Extract of a letter from Jamaica, May 11, 1816. 47. C. O. 295/39. J onn Spooner, of Barbados, to Governor Woodford. 42. C.

April

1

8,

1816.

O. 28/85. Co1 Codd to Governor Leith, April 25, 1816; Ibid.. Rear Admiral Harvey to J. W. Croker, April 30, 1816. 49. C. O. 295/60. A commandant of Trinidad to Governor Woodford, 48. C.

Aug.

-

30, 1823.

50. C.

O. 137/145. Shand to Bathurst, NOV,

26, 1817.


261

O. 111/44. D'Urban to Bathurst, May 5, 1824. 52 C. O. 295/89. Grant to Howick, Dec. 10, 1831. 53. C. O. 137/183. Mulgrave to Howick, Aug. 6, 1832.

51. C.

C. O. 28/111. Smith to Stanley, May 23, 1833. O. 1 1 1/8. Nicholson to Castlereagh, June 6, 1808. 56. C. O. 137/156. Manchester to Bathurst, July 31, 1824. 57. C. O. 28/85. Leith to Bathurst, April 30, 1816.

54.

55. C.

58. Ibid. 59. Ibid.

Codd to Leith, April 25, 1816. Leith to Bathurst, April 30, 1816.

O. 137/143. Alexander Aikman, Jr. to Bathurst, 6 1. C. O. 137/142. Manchester to Bathurst, May 4, 1816. 62. C. O. ii 1/39. Murray to Bathurst, Aug. 24, 1823. 63. Ibid. Murray to Bathurst, Sept. 27, 1823.

60. C.

64. C.

65. C. 66. C. 67.

1816.

1

D'Urban

to Bathurst,

May

1824.

5,

(This was the second

one day.)

68. Ibid. 69. C.

2,

O. 28/92. Warde to Bathurst, Aug. 27, 1823. O. 137/156. Manchester to Bathurst, July 31, 1824. O. 1 1/44. D'Urban to Bathurst, May 5, 1824.

Ibid.

letter in

May

D'Urban

to Bathurst,

May

15, 1824.

O. 28/107. Lyon to Goderich, March

70. Ibid.

Lyon

to Goderich, April

2,

28, 1831.

1831.

7i.C. O. 137/181. Beltnore to Goderich, Jan. 6, 1832. 72. C. O. 137/182. Belmore to Goderich, May 2, 1832.

O. 295/92. Grant to Howick, April 30, 1832. O. 137/188. Mulgrave to Goderich, April 26, 1833. Hansard, Third Series, XIII, 77. May 24, 1832. C. O. 137/191. F. B. Zuicke to Governor Belmore, May C. O. 28/111. Smith to Goderich, May 7, 1833.

73. C.

74. C. 75. 76.

77.

78. Ibid. 79. Ibid.

Smith to Stanley,

May

23, 1833.

CHAPTER i.

23, 1832.

13

Gaston-Martin, Vtre des Negriers, 1714-1774 (Paris, 1931), 424.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This book is based on a doctoral dissertation, "The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the British West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery," submitted to the Faculty of Modern History of Oxford University in September, 1938. Manuscript sources have been consulted chiefly for the years 1783-1833, the period covered by the dissertation.

I.

PRIMARY SOURCES (MANUSCRIPT) A. PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

Colonial Office Papers. There is no need to stress the value of While quotations have been reduced to a minimum, those selected for the text have been based on a thorough investigation of more than 230 volumes, embracing Jamaica, Barbados, 1.

this source.

Trinidad and Demerara (British Guiana), and covering the period 1789-1796 (the early years of the Abolition Movement) and 1807 to 1833. The call numbers are C.O. 27 (Barbados), C.O. in (Demerara, that is, British Guiana), C.O. 295 (Trinidad), C.O. 137 (Jamaica). 2. Chatham Papers, G.D./8. These were tapped only for the correspondence and records of the younger Pitt and not of his father. Much information on Chatham is scattered in the work of Pares.

The

papers consulted yielded

islands, Saint

much

valuable material

on the

British

India, and as Pitt dominated the British 1784 until his death in 1806, the collection

Domingue and

parliamentary scene from is of cardinal importance. 3. Foreign Office Papers. These were used especially for the years 1787 to 1793 and with specific reference to the British government's attitude to French Saint Domingue; a few important items have been included in the text. The call number is F.O. 27 (France).

262

BIBLIOGRAPHY 4.

263

Customs Records. The records consulted were Customs 8 and Customs j, British y

British exports, for the years 1814 to 1832;

imports. B. BRITISH

MUSEUM

1. Liverpool Papers. This is the most important of the collection of Additional Manuscripts for this study. The papers run into many volumes; specific references on each occasion will be found in the

As a West Indian proprietor and President of the Board of Trade, Lord Hawkesbury, later first Earl of Liverpool, occupied a prominent position in the period of the Abolition Movement. His correspondence includes many valuable letters and memoranda relative to the slave trade, the British and French colonies, British negotiations with the rebellious French colonists during the war with Notes.

France, and the question of East India Sugar. 2. Minute Books of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade

three volumes containing

much

useful and pertinent

material. 3. Auckland Papers. These are the papers of the British envoy sent to persuade the French in 1787 to abolish the slave trade; they contain five very valuable letters from William Wilberforce to supple-

ment 4.

rial

the biographies of the abolitionist.

Huskisson Papers. These papers contain some excellent mateon Huskisson's views of emancipation, the West Indians, and the

abolitionists.

C. LIVERPOOL PUBLIC LIBRARY

This library possesses three important manuscripts for this study. are Vol. 10 of the Holt and Gregson Papers, full of statistics on Liverpool's dependence on the slave trade and letters from Matthew Gregson on the same subject; correspondence of a slave trader, Robert Bostock; with his captains for the years 1789-1792; and the Journals of Liverpool Slave Ships, 1779-1788.

They

D. JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY, MANCHESTER In this famous provincial library, in a key town for the developBritish Capitalism and its relation to Negro slavery, there

ment of

are the hitherto unused English Manuscripts. The collection contains much material on East India sugar and the boycott of West

Indian slave produce; the letter of Buxton offering Christianity to

264

BIBLIOGRAPHY

the Negroes as compensation for slavery; and an interesting letter from T. B. Alacaulay pleading pressure of business as the reason for his inability to contribute to a projected

anthology to celebrate the

Emancipation Act. E.

WlLBERFORCE MUSEUM, HULL

This institution contains very little material. A few letters here and there, such as Gurney's on the value of Evangelization to Africa, are quoted in the text, with such call numbers as existed at the time of

my

visit

(June 1939).

The

value of the

Museum

lies

not in

its

literary records but in its exhibit of the gruesome instruments used in the slave trade. In one of the rooms there is a framed list of slaves

on "Orange classifications

Hill Estate" (location not given) which, among the according to labor, age and color, has one interesting

category into which fall five of the slaves, varying in age from i year and 8 months to 20 years "mongrels." Just what constituted a mongrel, on a plantation with the more familiar divisions of black, mulatto,

etc., is

not F.

clear.

RHODES HOUSE LIBRARY, OXFORD

In the possession of Rhodes House there is a manuscript volume handwriting of the abolitionist, James Ramsay. It is an interof notes, memoranda and speeches useful not only collection esting in the

movement in general but for the light they throw on an abolitionist too little known from his few pamphlets and the evidence he gave before the Privy Council in 1788.

for a study of the abolition

G. BANK OF ENGLAND RECORD OFFICE, ROEHAMPTON, LONDON

The Stock Ledgers of the East India Company are kept here. The volumes examined were the East India Company Subscription journals to ,800,000 additional stock, July, 1786, and East India

Company Stock

Ledgers, 1783-1791, 1791-1796. They were conbetween East Indians and abolitionists.

sulted for the connection

II.

PRIMARY SOURCES (PRINTED)

Hansard. The importance of the Parliamentary Debates for this period needs to be emphasized, for with thfe exception of one British writer, W. L. Mathieson, no real attempt has been made to utilize a source whose value, it might be thought, would be readily api

.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

265

parent. The debates have been thoroughly covered, for the years 1650 to 1860. For the earlier period ending roughly at 1760, the speeches are widely scattered, but, fortunately for the student, they have been collected and compiled in an easily consulted form by a

painstaking worker, L. F. Stock, under the title of Proceedings and Debates in the British Parliament respecting North America, and published, in five volumes to date, under the auspices of the Car-

negie Institution. For the years 1760 to 1860 the parliamentary debates appear under the following different titles: 1760 to 1803, Cobberfs Parliamentary History of England; 1803 to 1812, C obb erf s Parliamentary

Debates; 1812 to 1820, Hansard; 1820 to 1830, Hansard,

New

Series;

1830 to 1860, Hansard, Third Series. I have kept this official division to facilitate checking or consultation. This seemed more satisfactory

than the use of the single word Hansard to cover entirely different which would entail serious confusion as far as different volumes are concerned. In the earlier period many years' debates are included in a single volume; for the debates for 1845 and later

series,

years in general, a single year means usually four separate volumes. 2. Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America. This re-

markable four-volume work, another publication of the Carnegie Institution, puts the student of Negro slavery eternally in the debt of the late Professor Elizabeth Donnan and her able assistants. For present purposes the most important volume was Volume II, which deals with the eighteenth century and the West Indies. But Volume the seventeenth century, is also very useful especially for the period after 1688, while, where necessary, Volumes III and IV, dealing with the Northern and Middle, and the Southern Colonies of the mainland respectively, have been consulted. I,

3. Parliamentary Papers. Under this heading I include the papers submitted to Parliament and evidence collected by Parliamentary Committees. A detailed list is unnecessary in view of references

given in the Notes, but from 1 784 to 1 848 there are many useful reports which cannot be ignored for a study of the West Indies. If only because its existence is little known and its vast possibilities are still to be explored, special mention should be made of Volume 48 of the Sessional Papers for the Years 1837-1838, which gives a detailed list of the claims for compensation of slaves in accordance with the Emancipation Act of 1833. The only complete collection

of the Parliamentary Papers in existence is in the British Museum. 4. Report of the Committee of the Lords of the Privy Council

BIBLIOGRAPHY

266

Matters Relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations, 1788. an indispensable document for anyone who seeks to understand the situation of the sugar colonies after the American Revolu-

for

all

This

is

is certain that it was this report which explains the attitude of Pitt to the slave trade. Running into many pages, its most important sections are Part III, dealing with the conditions of the slaves; Part V, French competition in the sugar trade; and Part VI, Mis-

tion. It

cellaneous Papers received in the late stages of publication of the

Report.

The correspondence and memoranda

of various leading statesof the period have been published, at least in part Canning, Castlereagh, Wellington and Grenville (the last by the Historical 5.

men

Manuscripts Commission under the title of The Manuscripts of /. B. Fortescue Esq., preserved at Dropmore). In this category might well be included the Correspondence of William Wilberforce and the Private Papers of William Wilberforce, published by his sons. 6. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West

Equipped with an excellent index, these volumes include condensed form, relative to the West Indies, sugar cultivation, the slave trade, and economic relations between islands and mainland, while they also contain much useful information on the white servants in the islands. The volumes con-

Indies.

many

items, generally in

sulted cover the period 1611 to 1697.

III.

SECONDARY SOURCES A. CONTEMPORARY

The contemporary

material

is

voluminous.

The

writings of the

Davenant, Gee, Sir Dalby Thomas, Wood, have been carefully examined; so has The Wealth of Nations, the anti-mercantilist classic. Contemporary information on the indentured servants is limited, but what exists is useful. The leading

mercantilists,

Postlethwayt,

bitter polemical warfare

between West Indians and East

Indian's,

of

great importance, has been thoroughly investigated; in addition to the material in the British Museum, there were the resources of the

India Office Library and the pamphlet series of the John Rylands Library. Bryan Edwards' well-known History of the British West Indies deserves some notice, not only for its intrinsic value, but as

one of those rare cultural landmarks in a slave society which, unGreece, despised education and did not

like the slave society of

BIBLIOGRAPHY reproduce any of the great

gifts

267

of Greece to the world. In addition

numerous

local histories, especially of the great seaport industrial centers, and contemporary accounts of the

towns and growth of

British commerce and industry, have been examined. The writings of the abolitionists themselves have been used to a large extent, especially the well-known five-volume, rambling but informative biography of Wilberforce by his sons.

B.

The

MODERN

of authorities and sources

is unnecessary in any study which covers the years 1763-1833. There is a story to the effect that in the abolitionist circle, whenever a point was in dispute, someone would remark, "Look it up in Macaulay." "Look it up in Ragatz" would not be an exaggeration

listing

of the British

West

Indies

for Caribbean history during the period 1763-1833. Ragatz' The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean is a comprehensive study of the original sources. His Guide for the Study of British

Caribbean History, 1763-1834 (Washington, D. C, 1932) is an indispensable aid to the student of the Caribbean, who will find in it not only a complete list of works of all sorts but also a succinct precis of the leading ideas advanced in each work. The same writer's the Study of British Caribbean History, 1763-1833

Statistics for

gives valuable statistical data. The Check Lists of House of Comof Lords Sessional Papers, 1763-1834 should be consulted by all students baffled by apparently conflicting ways of re-

mons and House

ferring to such papers in this period. Professor Ragatz' three bibliogList of Books and Articles on Colonial History and raphies:

A

Overseas Expansion published in the United States, for the years 1900-1930, 1931-1932, 1933-1935, respectively, cite numerous books

and

articles

which

treat of the position of the white indentured

A

most recent bibliography: Bibliography for the Study of European History, 1815 to 1939 (Ann Arbor, 1942) gives, on pages 140-158, an exhaustive list of works on the United

servant. Finally his

Kingdom, which contains many

useful titles for the development of

Britain in the nineteenth century.

After Professor Ragatz comes yet another American scholar whose work on the Caribbean deserves especial mention, more so as it actually supplements, in the period of which it treats, the research of Ragatz. Professor Frank Pitman's The Development of the British

West

Indies, 1700-1763

is

another outstanding piece of

work

BIBLIOGRAPHY based, like Ragatz', on a careful analysis of original materials. The same author's essay on The Settlement and Financing of British West India Plantations in the Eighteenth Century, one of many essays written by students of C. ing short of a masterpiece.

M. Andrews

in his honor,

is

noth-

Two English studies deserve to be separated from the idealistic and garbled versions of slavery familiar in England. Richard Pares' War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1163, while inevitably full of war and diplomacy, none the less contains vital information on the West Indies, and is of great importance for the attitude of the West

Indian planters to the foreign sugar colonies.

Where

the social

and economic with Pares are subordinate, they dominate with W. L. Burn. The latter's Emancipation and Apprenticeship in the British

West

Indies is a scholarly analysis of the apprenticeship system, 1833-1838, though the first three chapters of the book, which deal with emancipation, are of less value, partly because the author was

content with secondary sources.

the lesser English writers, if only because while, like Coupland, he used only secondary sources, unlike Coupland, he used them well and remembered that England has a Parliament, where debates are held. With a better index, his four works on

W.

L. Mathieson

is

entitled to

Among

some mention

would be useful references. Coupland represents the sentimental conception of history; his works help us to understand what the abolition movement was not. Compared with his earlier venture

slavery

into the field of slavery,

C.

M. Maclnnes'

England and Slavery (London, 1934), Gateway of Empire is a healthy de-

Bristol, a

parture from emotional to scientific history; the latter work is based on unpublished materials in the Bristol archives. American historical idealism

ment

in

is

represented by F.

J.

Klingberg's

The Anti-Slavery Move-

England.

Special mention must be made of two studies which present in a ây the relationship between capitalism and slavery. The

general

by W. E. Williams: Africa and the Rise of CapitalisfHy published by the Division of the Social Sciences of Howard University in 1938. The second and more important is C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins, Toussaint UOuverture and the first is

a Master's essay

San Domingo Revolution (London, 1938). On pages 38-41 the advanced in this book is stated clearly and concisely and, as

thesis

far as

first time in English. In the field of colonial policy in general, two books are indispensable. C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American

I

know, for the

History, not merely includes excellent chapters on Barbados and

BIBLIOGRAPHY

269

it puts the sugar islands in their proper perspective in the mercantilist picture, while his description and analysis of the laws of trade and the colonial system in general are an essential introduction

Jamaica;

to any student of the first British Empire. Less broad in scope, but just as pertinent, is G. L. Beer's The Old Colonial System. Merivale's

Oxford during the years 1839 to 1841 on Colonization and Colonies is Oxford scholarship at its best, while Bell and Morrell's Select Docmnents on British Colonial Policy, 1830-1860 includes some very valuable reproductions of original documents for a vital period. For special studies of the West Indies under the old colonial system the works of Harlow, Williamson, and Higham are

lectures at

very important, Harlow's History of Barbados being the best of the three as showing an understanding of the fact that Barbadian for that matter, British West Indian problems of the twentieth century have their roots in the economic and social changes of the

seventeenth, represented by sugar and slavery. Works on the growth and development of individual British

Notes to the respective chapters. For the best general treatment of the development of capitalism in

industries are indicated in the

England, only two names need be mentioned Mantoux and Clapof Clapham's Economic History of Modern ham. Chapter Britain, The Early Railway Age, is the best short analysis of the u Industrial Revolution, while his essay on The Industrial Revolution and the Colonies, 1783-1822" in Vol. II of the Cambridge History

V

of the British Empire shows a more intelligent understanding of the abolition movement and the destruction of West Indian slavery than is

to be found in

all

the

works of the

"official" British historians.

In the field of literature Professor Sypher's Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the XVIllth Century is one of those excellent studies on Negro slavery which we have

learned to associate with the University of North Carolina Press. While the book is very weak in some respects unpardonably

weak

from the

political angle,

it

is

an intelligent and compre-

hensive analysis of the literature of the period, and as such, a useful aid for the social sciences. It can profitably be supplemented by a recent publication of one of my colleagues, Dr. Eva Dykes' The

Negro

in English

Rowantic Thought (Associated

Publishers,

Wash-

is ington, D. C, 1942). Marguerite Steen's best-seller novel, The Sun My Undoing, reveals a profound understanding of the triangular trade and its importance to British capitalism. Such sources as have been used for the development of French Saint Domingue and Spanish Cuba during the period under review

270

BIBLIOGRAPHY

have necessarily been secondary sources. For France the most im-

A

Rosenwald Fellowship in the portant writer is Gaston-Martin. summer of 1940 permitted me to work in the archives and libraries of Cuba. Pezuela's comprehensive Diccionario of the Island includes excellent material under the heading "Azucar" (Sugar), while Los Ingenios de is

la Isla

de Cuba, by a contemporary sugar baron, Cantero, work.

a lyrical, profusely illustrated, valuable and rare I have, in three published articles, treated in

greater detail some of the issues currently raised: "The Golden Age of the Slave System in Britain" (Journal of Negro History, Jan. 1940); **The Intercolonial Slave Trade after its Abolition in 1807" (Journal of Negro History, April 1942); "Protection, Laisser-Faire and Sugar" (Political

Science Quarterly,

March

1943).

INDEX

Abolitionists,

hypocrisy

of,

with Britain compared with W. I. trade, 53-55; shipping and trade

34;

W.

I., significance of attack on 135-36; strength of in industrial

with,

centers, 154; in Manchester, 155; in Birmingham, 157-58; in Sheffield,

1

59;

produce

159,

183-84,

179-82;

and

109-11;

190;

West

absenteeism, 85-86; Merivale on, 86; social position in England, 91

Adams, John,

W.

ican

118-19; effect of Molasses

I.,

cantilism, 06,

Amer-

mainland colonies, 54-55; and trade with, 58;

Bristol's trade with, 61; exports

of wool to, 65-68; Manchester's trade with, 68-70; exports of rum to, 78-80; iron exports to, 81-82; exports of guns to, 82; exports of brass to, 83 Agricultural Revolution, 98, 120 American mainland colonies, trade

107,

120; molasses

an essential ingredient

54-55,

shipping

re-

108-22; trade

Act on, 119; effect of Sugar Duties Act on, 119-20 American Revolution, 50, 130; effect on slave trade, 38; effect on cotton trade, 69, 72; effect on sugar trade, 77-78; effect on mer-

120-21

Africa, British trade with, 171; trade compared with

I.,

cantilists

91, 193-94;

of slave of Saint Domingue, 189 Absentee planters, and Deficiency Laws, 25, 86-87; consequences of

W. foreign W. with

with

economic

I., 115-20; meron trade of with for116-19; William eign W. I., Wood on trade of with foreign

with

emancipation,

on Brazilian sugar, 188on universal abolition trade, 189; on reconquest

contacts

personal

Indians, 112;

lations

182-83; on East India sugar, 18388; relations with East Indians,

183-88;

trade of, molasses and, 80-8 1,

triangular 6;

W.

support of Cobden by, 161; A. Committee, 166, 182-83; portraits of,

1 1

I., 115-16, 118-20; exports to 1 08; attitude of mercantilists to,

boycott of slave-grown by,

58;

78, 80,

effect

W.

I.

of, 120; 120-25; effect on slave system, 123-24; effect

on

W.

I.,

on old

colonial system, 124-26; reaction to, 209-10 Andrews, C. M., 56 British

rivalry, rival mercantilisms, 40; in sugar trade, 77-

Anglo-French

78, 116, 122-23,

Anti-Corn

Law

H5-48 League,

137,

155,

160

Antigua, trade of compared with

271

INDEX

272

American mainland

colonies, 54-

in,

201; misconceptions of slaves

55; decline of sugar

in, 203-4; s^ ave revolts in, 204-6;

in,

governor on slave revolt in British Guiana, 205; governor on

production 150-51; emancipation in, 191;

slave revolt in, 206

on,

Birmingham

Apprenticeship,

158; Sheffield on, 159

Asiento, importance of, 33; Postlethwayt on, 33; to Portugal, 39;

Anglo-French struggle

for,

40;

Bishop Robinson and, 42

labor

convict labor

problem

in, 12;

interests of, 101

Man-

slave

compensation to, 88; family dynasty in Parliament, 93; Mayor of London, 95; in,

5;

white labor

woolen production Molesworth on, 143

in, 22-23;

131;

banking

43;

Baring family, 43, 171 Beckford, William, Fonthill sion,

Attwood, Thomas, 158 Auckland, Earl of, 184-85 Australia,

cruelty of suspense, 207-8

Barclay family, slave trading of,

of,

87-88;

on increase of sugar duties, 06; master ironmonger, 104; role of in peace treaty of 1763, 115 Birmingham, in age of industry,

60;

gun trade

of, 82;

W.

I.

trade

Baillie family, 62

exports of brass of, 83; slave trade and, 82, 84; on aboli-

Baptists, 43

tion,

Barbados, 7; governor on weakness of Spain, 4; Monmouth's follow-

opposition to

JDacon, Antony, 103-4

ers

sent

to,

servants,

13;

16-17;

black labor

in,

conditions

of

cheapness

of

attitude 113;

French duction 191;

to

new

compared

islands, 113-14; in,

151;

in

67;

settle-

with

sugar pro-

emancipation

in,

on policy of amelioration,

197-09;

attitude

slaves, 201; free

134;

movement

in, 157-

58; interest in slave trade,

158

157 Brazil, slave trade, 47, 140, 170-75, 192; cotton exports, 71-72; Brit-

Codrington family in, 00; Charles II on importance of, 108; governor on trade with New England, no; soil exhaustion in, 112-13;

Bill,

monopoly,

Boulton, Matthew, 102, 126-27, 131,

on free trade woolen imports,

ments,

I.

23; ex-servants,

Latifundia, 25; on Christianity for slaves, 42; trade of compared with American mainland colo54-55;

154; abolition

W.

of

Redlegs, 25; sugar and increase of wealth, 25; growth of

nies,

on Reform

of

decline

23; increase

24;

sugar, 56-57;

84;

Blundcll, Bryan, 47 Bolton, John, 93, 95

19;

white population, black population,

of, 82-83;

of

planters

to

people of color

ish

exports to,

132;

restrictions

on

British trade with, 138; sugar cultivation in, 145, 150-52; sugar

exports to Britain, 151; sugar exports to Europe, 151; importation of sugar of for refining, 155, 163, 167, 193-94;

on sugar

ciation in Liverpool,

gow on of

Manchester

of, 155; Brazilian

Asso-

162; Glas-

sugar of, 163; boycott

produce

of,

170-71;

British

trade with, 172; abolitionists on importation of sugar of, 188-91 Bright, John, 156; zilian

on

on

W.

British

I.

monopoly,

capital

slave trade,

172;

in

Bra-

on sup-

INDEX pression of slave trade, 173 trade in indentured serv-

Bristol, ants,

freys'

10,

19;

n;

kidnaping,

visitation to,

Jef-

14-15; slave

trade, 32, 61; Qarkson's investi-

gations in, 35; profits of slave trade in, 36; Edmund Burke as of, 41; representative against colonial duties

protest slave

jection of Wilberforce's abolition bill, 42; committee of 1789

to oppose abolition, 48, 61, 101; in age of trade, 60; popularity of 62;

age dues of,

W.

60-61;

in,

customs duties in, 61;

members

61;

associated with

sugar

refining

I.

trade, 60-

in, 61;

wharf-

triangular trade of Parliament

W.

I.,

62, 74, 93;

73-74,

industry,

77-78; distilleries in, 79; pacotille trade, 81; brass industry in, 83; in, 101;

banking

on

equalization of

49; 182;

emancipation,

amendment, India, 185-86;

on importation of Brazilian sugar, 191; on emanon suppression cipation, 191-92;

sugar duties, 188;

of slave trade, 192; son of, 193

on

imports, 41; enthusiasm over re-

trade

183;

on gradual on Pownall on slavery in

Powell,

Buxton,

273

on Reform

Bill,

134 British Guiana, East Indian

immi-

gration to, 28; Gladstone plantations in, 89, 93; abolition in, 150-

vânada, a secure and certain vestment, British

4;

Voltaire of,

acquisition

with

compared

on,

in-

114;

114-15;

Grenada,

114;

Disraeli on, 144

Canning, George, attitude to West Indians, 95-96; on independence of Latin America, 132; representative of Liverpool, 162; on Brazilian trade,

170-71

Capitalism, British, attack on W.I. system, 136; attack on monopoly, 139; opposed to colonies, 142-45; on overproduction of sugar in West Indies, 152; opposed to W. I. monopoly, 154-68; opposed

to

of

suppression

169-77; attitude to

slave

W.

I.

trade,

slavery,

169

51; sugar production in, 151, 153; policy of amelioration in, 197-09;

Carlyle,

Bush Negroes in, 202; governor on alertness of slaves, 202; mis-

Castlereagh, Lord, 189 Chatham, Earl of, on British slave

conceptions

of

slaves

in,

203;

slave revolts in, 204-5

Brougham, Lord, planters,

York,

1

59;

181;

on absentee

representative of spokesman for woolen

86;

industry, 160; on British capital in Brazilian slave trade, 172; on

amendment, 183; on slavery in India, 186; on equalization of sugar duties, 188; on Pownall

slavery in sugar but not in cotton, 193

Burke, Edmund,

Burn,

W.

17, 41, 73

L., 132, 188

Thomas, 195-96

trade, 40;

on colonial manufac-

tures,

attitude to

56;

West

In-

Beckford on mainland trade

dians, 95; influence of

on, 95,

115;

with foreign Sir

Child, 1

6;

52;

W.

Josiah,

I.,

117

on emigration,

on value of labor in W. on New England, 109

China,

20,

131;

L,

Chinese in Cuba,

29; British exports to, 132, 134

Church,

the,

and slavery, 42-44

H., 127, 129 Clapham Sect, 181, 186 Clarkson, Thomas, on

Clapham,

J.

size

of

INDEX

274

slave ships, 35;

on transportation

of slaves, 35; on

rise

of Liverpool, American Revolution,

on

63; 124;

by Wordsworth,

praised

French translations of

195;

136,

works white

of,

on mortality of

147;

sailors in slave trade,

humanitarianism

of, 179;

166;

on East

India sugar, 185; sent to Aix-la-

on

189;

Chapelle,

produce, 194 Clay, William,

slave-grown

1

60-6 1

167

165,

on

W.

I.

monopoly,

on slave-grown sugar, on suppression of slave

160-61; 1

;

60-6 1 ;

trade, 173

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 42; slave plantations of, oo; bequest to All Souls Col90;

descendant in Parlia-

interest,

97;

127-29,

132;

opposition of manufacturers to

W.

I. monopoly, 154-57; imports from America, 162

Coupland, Reginald,

188,

178,

45,

Cowper, William, 45, 49 Cromwell, Oliver, transportation of Irish prisoners, 13; on acquisiof Jamaica,

tion

on

108;

New

England, 109 Cropper, James, controversy with Gladstone, 90; arrangements on

Cuba,

7;

153,

Quakers

facturers as

of

in, 43;

cotton manu-

members

of,

tobacco industry in com-

pared with Virginia, 2 r American labor in tocapital in, 26; white ;

bacco industry,

27;

Chinese

la-

bor, 29; Haitian labor, 29; British labor, 29; British

I.

tion,

Columbus, Christopher, 3, 8, 9 Company of Merchants trading to Africa, 32; Edmund Burke on,

Company

106,

of,

expansion

W.

ment, 93 Coleridge, Samuel, 195 Colonial Office, 139, 143-44, 1 80

41;

cotton

Lancashire

slavery, 186-87

Codrington, Christopher, legacy to

lege,

130; tech-

68,

nological changes in, 68; triangular trade and, 68-73; manufacturers of and slave trade, 70;

2iin

Cobbett, William, 133, 155 Cobden, Richard, on colonies, 14243; spokesman for woolen industry,

superseded wool,

33,

slave

114;

occupa-

trade,

47;

British restoration of, 114-15; restrictions on British trade with, 138; sugar production, 145, 149British sugar imports from,

52;

sugar

151; 152;

exports

growth of sugar

to

Europe,

plantations,

'5i-5 2

70

Royal Adventurers

Cunliffe, family, 47-48

trading to Africa, incorporation, 30-31; superseded

by Royal Af-

rican

31;

Company,

royal

pa-

tronage of, 39, 48 Convicts, 9, 11; Benjamin Franklin

27

W. W.

W.

on monopoly on value of 52; on British

31;

I.,

trade in seventeenth century, 53;

on

colonies, 55;

colonies,

I.,

West

on sugar refining on wealth of 86; on Northern

76;

Indians,

mainland colonies, 110

Cotton, cotton gin,

Negro

labor in

Charles, trade,

in

I4 1

155;

in slave

I.,

on, 12; in Australia, 12; Merivale on, 12; in Virginia, 12; in 12; after emancipation in

Uavenant,

20, 72, 124, 128,

Slavery

and,

23;

Declaration of Independence, 107,

INDEX Deficiency Laws, 24-25 Defoe, Daniel, 18, 48

W.

nopoly, 140; on colonies,

slave

W.

Benjamin, on

Disraeli,

I.,

on suppression of on emancipa-

144;

trade,

mo144; on I.

175;

Indians

on,

against

monopoly,

Christ and, 136-42;

56,

141;

275 struggle

57;

Jesus

movement

136;

for,

and,

anti-imperialism

142-45

French Revolution,

147, 209

tion, 194-95

Dominica, compared with Florida, 114-15; sugar production in, 151

Dominican Republic, 26

vJarbett, Samuel, 157

Gascoyne, General, 105 Gaston-Martin, 147, 209

Dumbell, Professor, 26

Gee, Joshua,

Dutch East Indies, Dutch Guiarta, 28

George

Company, compared

with slave trading companies, trade

of, of,

trade

3

1

;

37;

mercantilists

on

37;

competition

of

Manchester with, slave

of,

69; interest in

imports of

69;

guns by, 82; cultivation of sugar by,

123,

137-38,

151;

146,

140,

monopoly of, 137; W. I. monopoly by,

on

attack

137-38; re-

ceive sugar protection, 153; renewal of charter of, 184

East India

(Dutch), 37

Company

East India Sugar, Manchester on, 155; Sheffield on, 159; refiners on,

III,

George IV, 128

C/ast India

profits

31

opposition to abolition of, 39; Beckford and, 95; coronation procession of, 128

28

164;

on,

shipowners

abolitionists

on,

183-88;

grown, 184-86 Edwards, Bryan,

24, 90-91

Ewart, William,

163, 167

Exeter, Bishop of, 43;

167;

slave-

Georgia, 5, 7, 20, 43 Gibson, Milner, 156 Gladstone, John, of

Company, of,

Indian

woolen

in-

tions

of,

insurance connec-

09;

of, 105

Gladstone, Robertson, 99 Gladstone, William Ewart, tion

campaign

Fortescue, J. Francis I, 4

W.,

elec-

89-90;

defence of slavery by, 93; banking connections of, 09; on W, I. 141-42;

on parliamen-

tary interest in colonies, 144-45; on suppression of slave trade,

in,

Francklyn, Gilbert, 103

Free Trade, in

Newark,

on

Civil

War

in the United on protecting duty

trade, 60; co-

lonial trade of, 64; sugar refining

147

Franklin, Benjamin,

in

and Negroes, 191 Glasgow, in age of

Sir William, 70

mem-

tions of, 105; railway connections

175;

Florida, 114-15

to, 90;

compensation

States, 176-77;

r azackerly,

90;

Cropper, oo;

ber of Parliar:ent, 93; friend of Canning, 95; banking connec-

monopoly,

dustry of, 66

Association,

controversy with slave

plantations

chairman of Liverpool

89;

West

and

Corrie

slave

89;

12,

64,

64, 75;

45

slaves, 31-32;

75, 91;

West

power

tobacco industry in, Colonel Macdowall and,

75;

banking in, 127;

in,

on

101-2;

steam

free trade, 138;

276

INDEX

on importation of

Brazilian su-

gar, 163

Glassford, John, 102

pool, 162-63; on sugar refining in England, 165; on trade with India, 167

Goulburn, Henry, 93-94 Gregson, William, 99-100 Grenada, compared with Canada, 114; decline of sugar production,

Hutt, William, 173

J amaica,

7;

English officialdom on, settlers in Seaford,

German

17;

33;

on

33; duties

22; slave imports,

15*1 !53

Guadeloupe, British occupation,

slaves imported, 41, 46; trade of

British slave trade to, 33; cotton

compared with American main-

exports of, 72; British restoration

land

of, 114-15

trade with, 61-62;

dustry and

Guinea (coin), 44 Gurney, Joseph, 158, Jriarlow, Vincent,

colonies,

184,

Bristol's

54-55;

on woolen in

monopoly

in-

slave

trade, 67; woolen imports of, 67; restriction of production in, 77,

192

'17, 25

112-13;

Hatuey, 8

compared with Leeward

Beckford family in, 87Hibbert family in, 88; Long family in, 89; Gladstone plantaIslands, 77;

Hawkesbury, Lord,

94-95, 146, 178,

189

88;

on

in-

Hawkins,

tions

Henry

creased sugar duties, 06; effect of

Sir John, 30, 39 the Navigator, Prince, 9

family, slave trading of,

Heywood

in,

90;

governor

American Revolution

47; importers of slave-grown cot-

in, 121-23; decline of British exports to, 132;

ton, 47; humanitarianism of, 47banking interests of, 99

Roebuck

48;

Hibbert family, cotton manufacturers,

71;

sugar

planters,

Hibbert

trust, 88, 156;

Docks,

88;

and

88;

W.

I.

slave

anti-British feeling in,

in, 149;

on,

144;

144,

200;

bankruptcies

decline of sugar produc-

tion in, 140-53; on suppression of slave trade, 176; on policy of 198-99; attitude of planters to slaves, 201; Maroons

compensation to, 88; Hibbert's House, 88; Hibbert Journal, 88-89; George Hib-

amelioration,

in,

202; misconceptions of slaves

bert, 88, 93, 95, 136

in,

203-4; slave revolts in, 204-7;

violence of planters

Hogarth, William, 44, 79 Holland, rivalry with England, 40; trade with British Colonies, 56

Java, 150

House

to

Jeffreys, Judge, 14-16

in,

Jenks, Leland, 131

of

abolition,

Lords, 48;

opposition Indians

West

rejected Reform Bill, 133; protest to against Corn Laws, 138

Jefferson,

Thomas,

in,

207

7, 18, 107,

120

94;

Howick, Lord, 166

Klingberg,

F.

J.,

188

Knight, James, 25

Hume,

Joseph, 138, 143, 177 Huskisson, William, attitude

West

Indians, 95-96, 139;

sons

of

American

on

to les-

Lansdowne, Lord,

166

Lascelles family, 93-94

Revolution,

Latin America, export of British

124-125; representative of Liver-

capital to, 131-32; British exports

INDEX to,

132;

ence

Canning on independ-

Lauber, A. W., 8-9 Lecky, W. E. H., 13

slave trade and, 172

Leeds, 130 with,

Islands, 13; Bristol's trade

61;

compared

with

Ja-

Leyland, Thomas, mayor of Liverslave

47;

trading of, 47;

banking interests

of,

99-100

Liverpool, slave trade, 32, 34; profits of slave trade, 36; popularity of slave trade, 37, 62-64, 95; profits of W. I. trade, 36-37; losses of slave trade, 38; protest

against colonial duties on slave imports, 41; slave traders, 47; mayors engaged in slave trade, 47-48; .

members of Parliament

engaged

in

slave

trade,

48;

modification of Navigation

on

Laws

(1739), 57; shipbuilders and slave in slave sailors trade, 58-59;

roperies in, 59; on regulation of slave trade, 59; in age of trade, 60; customs receipts trade,

59;

growth of population in, 63; dock duties in, 63, 162; Clarkson on rise of, 63; relationin,

Lloyd family (banking), 157 Lloyd's (insurance), 104-5

London, kidnaping

n;

in,

62-63;

ship with Manchester, 63, 68, 162;

lonial

on Docks

slave

duties

W.

41;

I.

imports,

of, 60;

in,

ing

on

101;

free trade,

W.

opposition to

monopoly, on independence of South

154;

America, 171

Long

on cost of sugar Beeston Long, 89; Long, historian of Ja-

family, 89;

plantations, 25;

Edward

89; Lord Farnborough, steam engine and, 103; profits

maica, 89;

of sugar plantations Louis XIV, 39 Louisiana, Luttrell,

9,

of, 122

150

Temple, 49

Macdowall, William,

75, 91,

Macaulay, T. B. (Lord), 193-94 Macaulay, Zachary, 181, 185-86 Manchester, in age of industry, 60;

on woolen

with Liverpool, 63, 68;

trade, "67; triangular

and,

trade, 67; sugar refining in, 75;

trade of, 68,

distilleries in, 79;

with

83-84;

heavy industry banking in, 98-101;

anti-slavery society of, 105; rail-

way between Manchester and, 105;

102,

163

industry and

in slave

138;

I.

trade

monopoly

woolen

industry of, 66-67; sugar refining in, 74, 77; gun trade in, 82; bank-

capital in slave trade, 63; opposition to abolition, 63; on woolen

in,

slave

trade and, 32; protest against co-

maica, 77

pool,

162;

slavery,

cotton imports of, 162; free trade sentiments in, 162-63; Brazilian

of, 132

Leeward

with

connection

277

68-73;

Africa,

with Indian

relationship

128-29, 68;

133;

W.

I.

trade

competition

textiles,

68-69,

71;

relationship of cotton manufactures with slave traders, 70-71;

trade of with Latin America, 132; indifference of to W. I., 132;

raw cotton imports

on East India Company's monopoly, 138; on free trade, 138;

railway between Liverpool and, 105; growth of population in, 1 06, 128; development of cot-

opposition to 154,

W.

I.

monopoly,

161-63; slave trade,

161-62;

sugar refining

in, 75;

of,

71-73;

banking

in,

98;

ton industry, 127-29; on monop-

INDEX

278

on trade by "moral 134; on free trade,

133;

oly,

obligation,"

136; opposition to W. I. monopoly, 154-57; interest in slave

trade,

155;

system,

to

slave

relations

with

opposition

155-56;

Liverpool, 162; on South American market, 171; Brazilian slave trade and, 172, 174

land trade with foreign W. I., 116-19; slavery and, 136; Disraeli on, 1

Merivale, Herman, on importance of labor for commercial production,

4;

fresh

Mansfield, Chief Justice, 45-46

labor,

Mantoux, Paul,

1

27

104-5; slave

Maryland,

compensation

7, 16,

to, 105

26

Mauritius, 49; equalization of sugar duties of with W. I., 133 ; growth

of sugar production, 150-51 Mercantilism, favored emigration,

opposed to emigration, 15-16; on danger of colonial manufactures from introduction of white 10;

proposal to

18;

manu-

facture dimity in Barbados and, 24; on slave trade to foreign

on East India

colonies, 33;

trade,

37; rival mercantilisms, 40; effect

of discovery of America on, 51;

W.

I. trade, 55; on on colonial system,

on triangular colonies,

55*;

slavery,

5;

on exon on

soil,

value

7;

of convict

on industriousness of whites in slave economy, 25; on absenteeism, 86; on free trade with U. S., 124; on Australian wool, 131; on W. I. monopoly, J J on colonies, 144; 35 38 *33 on abolition, 150; on slavery, 194 12;

;

Massachusetts, 4-5

servants,

on

pensiveness of slave labor, 7; superiority of slave labor

Manning, Cardinal, 43

.Marryat, Joseph, 94; famous son of, 91; connection with Lloyd's,

Navigation Laws and,

140;

68

Laws

Metallurgical industries, triangular trade and, 81-84; technological innovations in, 84, 126-27; expan-

^

sion of iron industry, 103-4, I0 129-30; expansion of coal industry,

129; ironmasters

tion,

157-59;

and

ironmasters

aboli-

and

slave trade, 158

Methodists, 129, 155, 181

Middle Passage, 34-35 Miles family, representing Bristol in Parliament, 62; sugar refining of, 74; slave

alderman of

compensation, 74-75; Bristol, 95;

banking

interests of, 101

57,

Mittelberger, G., 13 Molasses, embittered relations be-

67; struggle against laissez faire,

tween sugar planter and English

55-56; Navigation 133;

57,

57;

on

fisheries, 59;

refining

and, 56-

on woolen industry,

in

ban on sugar

landlord, 80; embittered relations

in

between sugar planter and mainland colonist, 80; in New England economy, 80-8 1, 118; in French W. I., 80; Molasses Act,

colonies,

75-76;

France, 76; effect of American Revolution on, 96, 107; stimulated 105;

Industrial Revolution, 98brake on ecomonic prog-

ress, 106-7,

107;

X

33i

attitude

Adam of

Smith on, to Northern

mainland colonies, 100-11; a system, however bad, no; on main-

119

Moles worth,

143

Monk, General, 40 Monopoly, in slave

W.

I.

trade, 30-32; in planters oppose, 31, 56;

INDEX colonial

British

55-56;

system,

merchants on, in eighteenth cen57;

tury,

free

against

struggle

West

trade with

Newfoundland, of,

woolen industry on

Newton, John,

monopoly

in slave trade, 66-67;

New

Adam

Smith on,

107; attack

on

West

Indian, 126-27, 135-42, 153; attack on, 127, 137-39; Manchester on, 133; in corn, 137-38; in

Comon West

sugar, 137-39; of East India

pany, 137-38; Indian,

capitalists

162-63;

Montserrat, an Irish colony, need of white servants and

13;

Ne-

groes, 17; decline of white popuincrease of black lation, 24; 24;

trade

of

com-

pared with American mainland Moravians, 43 Moss, James, banking interests, of, 101; railway connections of, 105

modified,

ism,

56-57;

West

Indians on, after American

133;

57,

Revolution, 121; repealed, 167-68 Nelson, Horatio, 44 Nevis, white servants, 24; decline of white population, 24; increase of black population, 24; slaves 39; trade

West

with

Africa, 54-55;

New

of compared with

American mainland

woolen imports, 67

North, Lord, on American Revolution, 121;

North

on

abolition, 126

Carolina, 19-20

vJ'Connell, Daniel, 207 Okill, John, 58 Oldham, 128

Oswald

family, 163

Ortiz, Fernando,

colonies, 54-

Palmerston, Viscount, on protec-

of Alex-

Sir Robert, protectionist in sugar, 140; on British participation in Brazilian slave trade, 172;

England, slavery

in, 9;

trade

Indies

and

Africa, 54-55; distilling in, 80-8 1, 118; triangular trade of, 78, 80;

exports of rum, 80; attitude of 109-11;

food

member

of Par-

liament, 93; raised to the peerage, 94;

on steam engine, 103; revostate industry in

lutionized

Wales, 105 Pennsylvania, indentured servants, 10; treatment of indentured servants,

W.

1

I.

6;

trade of

compared with

colonies and Africa, 54-55;

woolen imports Philips,

compared with West

in India, 185

Pennant, Richard,

Phillips,

150-51

slave

Peel,

in,

to,

on suppression of

trade, 174-75

112; decline of

in, 91;

21

8,

Pacotille, 81

sugar production

mercantilists

compared

Zealand, 143

Pinney family ander Hamilton, 55;

New

of

Indian colonies and

on slavery

amier, L. B., 92, 113

Navigation Laws, and mercantil-

in,

market

I.

166

42-43,

trade

York,

tion, 139;

colonies, 54-55

IN

W.

Manchester on,

154-68;

154-57; Liverpool on, sugar refiners on, 163-66

population,

Indies of, 109-11

52;

59

57;

trade,

279

of, 67

Philippines, 150, 167

Mark, 155-156, 167 V. B., 19, 27

Pinney family, in Nevis, 91; on

American Revolution, 121 Pitman, Frank, on value of plantations,

trade with

W.

W.

I.

on

mainland

L, 108;

on Jamaica

53;

plantations, 151

280

INDEX

Pitt,

William, on

W. W.

53;

I.,

on

incomes from between

free trade

and America,

I.

121; interest

in India of, 123; encourages Wilberforce to sponsor abolition,

compliment to Adam Smith, 138; on slave trade, 146; on East India sugar, 146; on abo148;

123,

lition, 146-48;

acceptance of Saint

Domingue, 147-49 Plantation, climatic theory of, 20I. 25; decline of whites in

W.

and, 23-24; increase of blacks in

W.

I.

and, 23-24; slavery and, 27

Pope, the,

30, 33

3,

claimed

in ship of Brazil, 3; immigrants I., 27; Asiento and, 39; slave

W.

trade, 39 Postlethwayt, Malachi, on danger of manufacturing in colonies

from white nopoly

servants, 18;

in

slave

trade,

on mo31; on

of slave trade, 49-50; on slave trade, 51-52; on coloabolition

nies, 55;

on mainland trade with

foreign W. I., 116-17 Price, Grenfell, 21-22

70;

on

British

slave

trade

to

of foreign colonies, 34; on costs

sugar production, 145-46 Protection, Palmerston on, 139; un-

sound, 140;

139;

West

Puerto Rico,

protectionists

on,

Indians on, 141 21,

on value of

26-27

slave trade, 147;

slave trade, 167; personal experience of slavery of, 180-81

Rathbone, William, 58-59 Raynal, Abbe, 105, 110

Reform

Bill,

Ricardo,

133-34, 158, 209

LM

J.

164, 168

139,

Robinson, Bishop, 42 Rodney, Admiral, 44, 127 144

J.,

Roscoe, William, 49, 100, 162 Royal African Company, patronage of Royal Family, 16, 39, 48; created, 31; abolition of monopoly of slave trade

and,

slaves exported by, 32;

31-32;

war with

Dutch West India Company, 40; woolen industry and, 66-67; Samuel Touchet and, 70; iron trade and, 81-82; 82

gun trade and,

Rum,

triangular trade and, 78-81; imports into Britain, 78; distil-

New

in

distilleries

leries in

tion

in

England, 78-80;

Bristol,

79;

distil-

Liverpool, 79; competi-

with gin, 79; competition 80 spirits,

with corn

Oaba,

21

Saco, J. A., 1 8, 27 Saint Domingue, 7; refiners on, 78; British evacuation of, 94; necessity of Britain taking over,

transportation of, 13; participation in slave trade, 43of against slave 44; petition

with Jamaica,

trade, 126

production

(Quakers,

on

mortality of white sailors in the

leries

Privy Council Committee of 1788,

slave

British

trade- to foreign colonies, 34; on character of slave traders, 46;

Roebuck,

ownership of Columbus* discoveries, 3; owner-

Portugal,

Ragatz, L. J., 1 88 Ramsay, James, on

148;

value

of,

1

08;

113,

103,

compared

122-23; sugar

Queensland, 22-23

122-23, 145offered to England, 147-49, 200; effect of slave revolt on

Queen

price of sugar, 164; abolitionists

Queen

Elizabeth, 39 Victoria, 136

in,

113,

50;

INDEX on reconquest of, 189; repercussions of slave revolt in, 202 Kitts

St.

Christopher), Euroin, 28; decline

(St.

pean immigrants

of sugar production Lucia, 151

in, 151

St. St.

Martin, 21

St.

Thomas,

281

Shipping industry, stimulated triangular trade, 57-58; nopoly of slave trade,

by on moon-

59;

ancillary trades, 59; interest in slave trade, 167; interest in free trade in sugar, abolition,

59;

Navigation Laws and, 167-

167;

68

21

St.

Vincent, 151, 153

Sierra Leone, 43, 145, 163, 179

St.

Vincent, Earl, 44

Singapore, 131,- 151, 167 Slave compensation, to Bishop of Exeter, 43; to Earl St. Vincent,

Sandars, Joseph, 105 Scotland, attempt to set up inde-

pendent African company,

Act of Union,

56;

56, 64, 75

Servants, indentured, successors of Indian slaves, 9; reasons for, 10;

44; to Baillie family, 62; to Miles family, 74-75; to Beckford family, 88;

to Hibbert family, 88; to

Gladstone family, 90; to Goul-

passion for independence of, 10;

burn, 94; to Earl of Balcarres,

traffic in, 10;

94; to

kidnaping of, 10-11, 14; "newlanders," u; transportation of Cromwell's Irish prisoners,

of

13; transportation

well's

Scottish

Crom-

prisoners,

transportation

of

transportation followers, 13;

of

Quakers,

14-16;

105;

op-

to,

159;

sugar refineries on, 165

13;

of as an economic institution, 5;

treatment of

became

status

Sheffield

Slavery, necessary to prevent dispersion of labor, 5; importance

Monmouth's

14; Jeffreys'

kidnapers,

of

13;

transportation of Jacobites, 13; conditions of journey, 13-14; vested interest in

system,

Marryat family,

position

7, 153;

expensiveness, 5-6,

advan-

and

disadvantages of, 6; soil exhaustion and, 7, 113; expansion necessary, 7; racism and, tages

7-29; Indian slavery, 7-9; ineffi-

ciency of Indian slave,

9;

eco-

progressively worse, 16-17; English sensitiveness on, 17; Defoe on, 1 8; tended to democratic

nomic

jected,

20-23; sugar, cotton, to-

society, 18; Postlethwayt on, 18; with Negro slaves, 18-

bacco

and,

compared 19;

the historical base for

slavery,

19;

climatic

Negro

theory of

plantation and, 20-23 Sharp, Granville, 45 Sheffield, in age of industry, 60;

W.

I.

connections

W.

of,

104;

op-

monopoly, 154; position to abolition movement in, 159; on I.

East India produce, 159; on apprenticeship, Sheffield,

159

Lord, 121

1

6,

origin of Negro slavery, 10-29; climatic theory of, re-

23; supported by Church, 42-44; in England, 4445; law of slave production, 113, 145, 150-51; Manchester on, 156; in India, 184-86; changed attitude

towards, 194-96; policy of amelioration,

197-201; slaves to, 201-8

Slave trade, Negro,

attitude

of

demanded by

slavery, 30; British foreign policy and, 30; Sir John Hawkins' ex-

pedition, 30-32;

30,

39;

volume of

monopoly

in,

British, 32, 33;

282

INDEX W.

to foreign colonies in I., 3334; Asiento, 33, 40; mortality of slaves,

34-35;

of,

profits

35-37;

popularity in Liverpool, 37, 62discrimination,

64; required

37-

38; risks of, 38; royal patronage of, 1 6, 39, 48; British Govern-

ment's attitude to, 40; struggle for Asiento, 40; British Government's attitude to colonial duties on,

40-41,

46;

insurance

com-

panies and, 46, 104-5; character of men engaged in, 46-48; a great education, 47; humanitarianism of

men engaged against 48-49;

47-48; protests

in,

in eighteenth century, defence of in eighteenth

Wood

century, 49-50; William on, 51; Posdethwayt on, 51; imI. of, 52; merportance to

W.

and, 58; woolen industry and, 66-67; Manchester's

chant marine

rum

interest in, 68-73;

m

i

78-80;

development of banks and, 98101; effect of American Revolution on, 123-24; Lord North on abolition of, 126; Quaker peti-

tion against,

demand renewal 146;

attempt

West

126;

Indians

of, 141; Pitt on,

at

international

abolition of, 146-47; British aboli-

tion

of,

support abolition ter,

155;

W.

149-50; abolition

I.

planters

of,

149-50;

movement in Manchesabolition movement in

Birmingham, 157-58; Birmingham on,

158;

mortality

of

white

Adam, on

Smith,

new

colonies,

ness of slave

prosperity

of

on expensivelabor, 5-6; on im4;

portance of discovery of on profits of ica, 51;

Amersugar

Wealth of Nations, 107, 120, 124; on colonial system, 107, 120; on free trade between West Indies and America, 121; "invisible hand" plantations,

53,

85;

complimented by Pitt, quoted by Cobden, 142 Society for the Propagation of the of,

136;

138;

Gospel, 42

South Africa, 143 Southey, Robert, 49, 195 Spain, Indian slavery in colonies, 8-9; colonial policy and white 21, 27; Asiento and, smuggling trade to colo34; monarchy and slavê

immigrants, 33, 39;

nies,

trade, 39

Steam engine, financed by capital from W. I. trade, 102; progress of,

1

06, 126-28, 131, 155

Steen, Marguerite, 44

Stephen, James, trusteeship 1

80;

on

Pitt,

148;

sions in Trinidad,

of, 144,

on manumis199

Sturge, Joseph, 158, 161, 192 Sugar, Negro slavery and, 23; dispossession of small farmer by, 23-25; increase of black population

and,

wealth

in

growth of

23-24;

increase

Barbados

and,

of 25;

latifundia in Barbados

and, 25; a capitalist undertaking,

shipowners* in-

25;

a lottery, 38; profits of, 53,

terest in, 167; British attempts to

85,

no; importance of to EngW. I. Docks and im-

sailors in, 166-67;

secure abolition of

by Spain and

land, 55;

Portugal, 169; British capital in, 171-72; British policy of suppres-

ports of, 60; refining industry in England, 73-78; refining in plan-

sion of, 171-76; British goods in,

tations, 75-76; iron industry and,

on suppressing,

82-83; brass industry and, 83-84; increase of duties on, 96-97; in-

172; abolitionists

193-94;

Gaston-Martin on, 209

INDEX volved monoculture, 110-11; superiority of French production, 113-14,

duties

145-49;

on,

123,

137-38; world production, 14553; in Cuba, 145, 149-52; in Brazil,

150-52; beet, in

145,

W.

overproduction

149-50; 149,

I.,

152; in Mauritius, 151; decline of production in British W. I., 14953; equalization of duties, 153;

importation of Brazilian for reslave-grown,

refiners

165;

156,

163;

155,

fining,

of,

163-66;

equalization of duties on, 164

Sugar planters, opposed to monopoly in slave trade, 31; clash with

283

Thomson, James, 48-49 Thomson, Poulett, 167 Thornton family, 181, 186 Tobacco, comparison of in Cuba and Virginia, 21; small farming in

Barbados, 23;

Negro slavery slavery in Virginia and, 26; industry in Glasand, 23;

gow,

Negro 75;

64,

with

compared

sugar, 85

Tobago, 150 Tordesillas,

Treaty of, 3 Touchet, Samuel, 70-71 Toussaint, L'Ouverture,

202,

195,

204

slave traders, 33-34, 40-41; clash

offences, 11-12; Transportation, conditions of journey, 13-14

with merchants, 40-41, 55-57, 92;

Triangular trade, organization of,

to

51-52; stimulus to British indus-

opposed monopoly in sugar trade, 56; on free ports, 56; clash with refiners, 76-78; restriction of

try of, 52, 65-84, 98-107; profits from finance Industrial Revolu-

production by, 76-78; clash with

tion, 52, 98-105; stimulated ship-

interest,

80,

English agricultural 93, 97; wealth of, 85; opposed to increase of sugar duties, 96-97; to

Sugar

new

settlements,

113,

149-50

refining, in

Glasgow, 64, 75; in Britain, 73-78; in Bristol, 7374, 77-7 8 ; in London, 74, 77; re-

and

ping

shipbuilding,

57-59;

growth of seaport towns, 60-64; woolen industry

stimulated

and, 65-68; cotton manufacture and, 68-73; sugar refining and, 73-78; rum and, 78-81; metallurgical industries and, 81-84, 102-4;

abolition, 74; in Liver-

banking and, 98-102; insurance

pool, 75; clash of refiners with

and, 104-5 Trinidad, white servants, 24; East Indian migration to, 28, 90; War-

finers

on

planters, finers,

76-78; 77,

74,

petitions of re164; refiners on

high prices of sugar, 77; refiners

on

W.

I.

monopoly,

163-66;

on

East India sugar, 164; capital in-

vestment

of,

165;

on

slave

com-

ner family in, 90; abolition in, 150-51; sugar production in, 15153;

on policy of amelioration,

197-99; free people of color in, 201;

pensation, 165

violence 20 7>

202-3,

Sypher, Wylie, 49

of

of,

planters

misconceptions

of

slaves in, 203-4

1 arleton family, 48, 162

"The West Indian," 86, 93 Thomas, Sir Dalby, on value of labor in the

W.

I.,

53;

on impor-

tance of sugar to England, 55

Tucker, Josiah, 49

United

States, trade

with of

W.

121-22;

transport

Europe,

122, 149; free trade

sugar

I.,

to

with

INDEX

284

124-25, 131-32; Merivale free trade with Britain, 124; Huskisson on free trade with

Britain,

banking connections

on

insurance

Britain, 124-25;

railway connections of, 105; victory of with regard to peace

cotton exports to

Britain, 128, 132; export of British capital to, 131; British im-

cotton

ports

of

British

government on

in,

from, Civil

162;

War

176-77

Utrecht, Treaty of, 40-42

labor, 12; Negro slavery, 26 Voltaire, F. M., 17, 114

Wakefield, Gibbon,

4,

on their moon East India

on

Brazilian

sugar, slave

on

suppression of trade, 175-76 West Indies, white servants 140;

convict labor

in, 11-

12;

in,

Irish

profits of trade with, 36-37; importance of Negroes to, 52; value of plantations in, 53; Adam Smith on profits of 13;

in, 53, 85;

trade

shipping and, 58; imports of fish in, 59; London docks and trade

family, 90

,

with, 60; Bristol's trade with, 61; Glasgow's trade with, 64; exports 124,

of wool to, 67-68; Manchester's trade with, 68-70; cotton exports

142

Wedgwood,

Josiah, 179

Wellington,

Duke

West Indians, Reform Bill,

of,

of, 71-73, 128; refining in, 75-76;

attitude

to

95-96; attitude to

134; boycott of produce of slave trading countries and, 169-70; on suppression of slave trade, 175; on slavery in India, 184; and abolitionists, 189;

abolition, 189

Wertenbaker, T.

Wesley, John,

West

105;

with Britain compared with mainland colonies trade, 53-55;

6

Washington, George, 13, 107 Watt, James, 102, 126-27, *57 Wealth of Nations 107, 120,

on

140;

sugar,

sugar cultivation

Walpole, Horace, 41

Warner

140-42;

nopoly,

servants in,

Virginia, 7; Indian Slavery, 8; indentured servants, 10; convict

of,

treaty of 1763, 115;

14;

Vasa, Gustavus, 158

100-2;

of,

connections

J.,

18,

26

181

Association, oo; of Liverpool, 100 West India Interest, clash with India

English agricultural interest, 80, 93, 97; social position of in Eng-

rum

trade of, 78-81; iron exports I 3i exports of brass to,

to, 81-84,

83-84;

legacy of plantation

ance companies and, 104-5; imports from mainland colonies of, 1 08; ecomonic relations with

mainland colonies, 108-22; food imports

of,

no-n,

121;

mono-

HO-II; personal contacts with North Americans, 112; culture

in,

Stamp Act in, 121; American Revolution United States trade

power of in eighteenth century, 92-97; members of, in

American decline

of

Parliament, 92-94, 97; powerful friends of, 95-06; opposition to increased sugar duties, 96-97;

131-32;

monopoly

land, 91;

in,

92; profits of trade with, invested in heavy industry, 102-4; insur-

effects

of

in,

120-25; with after

Revolution, 121-22; British trade with, of,

133,

135-42;

omy

of, 135-36, 138-39;

126-27,

unprofitable

econ-

competi-

INDEX tion of East India sugar, 137-38, 153; Roebuck on, 144; decline of

sugar

production

in,

149-53;

on monopoly of, Cobbett on monopoly

capitalists

68;

154of,

on monopoly of, 154-57; Bright on protecting duty of, 156-57; boycott of produce of, 159, 183-84, 155;

cotton

manufacturers

190; refiners of sugar on, 164-65; attitude of towards planters

slavery, 197-201; free people of color in, 201; attitude of slaves

285

tacked by Nelson, 44; fear of House of Lords, 48; attacked by Boswell, 49; encouraged by Pitt to sponsor abolition, 123, 181; Pitt's

in

of, 148; on aboliabolition movement

support

tion, 150;

on

Manchester, 155; Cobbett on, York, 159;

155; representative of

spokesman for woolen industry, 1 60; on mortality of white sailors in slave trade,

on

Canning to

166;

Brazilian trade, 170-71; imagi-

nary interview with Coupland,

towards slavery, 201-8; slave re-

178;

volts in, 202-8

character of, 181-82; on emanci-

West

Indies (French), British supply of slaves to, 33-34; sugar refining in, 76; molasses in, 80;

superiority

American

of,

113-14,

122-23;

trade

with, 115-20, 122; sugar cultivation in, 145 Westmoreland, Earl of, 48

West

Riding, 130, 154, 160 Whitefield, George, 5, 43

Whitehaven, 103 Whitmore, Thomas,

on

opposition to abolition, 39; attacked by William IV, 39;

enthusiasm over rejecbill

Ramsay

to,

180;

on Pownall amend-

183; letter of

ent,

Liverpool to

abolition, 189; son of, 192

Wilkinson, John, 106, 129 Williamson, J. A., 10 Winthrop, Governor, no Wood, William, on slave trade, 51;

on value of labor in W. I., 53; on mainland trade with foreign

W.

Ill's

Bristol's

pation, 182;

of

118-19 triangular trade and, 65-68; technological changes in, 68; I.,

Wool,

187

Whitney, Eli, 20, 128 Whitworth, Sir Charles, 53-55 Wilberforce, William, on George

tion of abolition

letter

of, 42; at-

superseded by cotton, 68,

expansion

of,

130;

130;

Australian,

exports of to China, 134; opposition to W. I. monopoly, 131;

160-61

Wordsworth, William,

136, 195

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